


When lightning strikes me

by orphan_account



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: F/F, First Time, Fluff, Jedi Training, Lightsabers, Slice of Life, Slow Burn, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-29
Updated: 2016-05-29
Packaged: 2018-06-10 11:49:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 27,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6955309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As Rey finds her place in the Resistance after the battle of Starkiller Base, she strikes a friendship with Lieutenant Connix, her liaison on Ahch-To and her bunkmate on base. While she learns the ways of the Jedi, her feelings for the lieutenant grow deeper.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. D'Qar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey spends her last night on the D'Qar Resistance Base, before leaving to find Luke Skywalker.

The celebrations outside were loud enough to be heard in the medical bay.

There was music and laughter, and Rey wondered if Finn could hear them.

She looked at his expressionless face, at his chest rising up and down slowly. He seemed so far, far away from her.

She had been alone for as long as she could remember. She had met people on Jakku, who had helped her, but there was always a hidden agenda behind the gestures of kindness. Finn was the first being who had acted selflessly for her sake. All she had managed to do in return was to make him cross paths with Kylo Ren and nearly send him to his death.  
  
Her guilt was a weight in her chest, crushing her heart and her lungs. It kept her from leaving Finn’s side. Doctor Kalonia assured her that he would make it, and that there was nothing more to do for him before he wakes up. That it was pointless for her to stay here.  
  
For anyone to stay here, really, but that hadn’t stopped Commander Dameron and BB-8 from joining her on her bedside vigil. They had talked, congratulating each other on their respective roles on the destruction of Starkiller Base, though it was really Han Solo, Chewbacca, and the Starfighter Corps that did all the heavy lifting. The subject had quickly changed on Finn, each of them recalling how he had made the right thing and helped them both when they needed it the most. It became painful for both of them to talk about him, when they weren’t yet sure if he would wake up sooner or later, and what damages his injuries did to him.  
  
They stood silent instead, and overcome with the adrenaline crash, Poe had dozed off, BB-8 nudged between his legs.  
  
Her body was tired and weary, but whenever she would close her eyes, she would see flashes of red-purple-blue lightsabers lights, and Finn howling in pain. She wished she could turn back time, let him fly to the Outer Rim with that pirate crew. Had she not tried to talk him out of it, maybe he would have left the planet before the First Order attack. The difference a few minutes could make, she thought bitterly. Selfishly, she had wanted him to stay with her, hadn’t wanted to be alone again. All for nothing, because tomorrow she would leave him anyway, to find Luke Skywalker. She wasn’t expecting to be welcomed warmly. Luke Skywalker had chosen to explore the first Jedi Temples on his own, leaving his friends behind. He hadn't probably intended to ever come back.  
  
The whoosh of the automatic door snapped her out of her musings. From the other side of the hospital room, Kaydel Ko Connix was standing, looking at the three of them expectantly. In her right hand, she was holding a back bag deformed by the weight of its content. BB-8 rolled away from his master slowly, careful not to make too much noise and risk waking him up, before stopping in front of the lieutenant.  
  
She crouched down before the droid, putting her hand on top of its head. “General Leia Organa sent me to look for you,” she explained, voice loud enough to be heard by Rey but not loud enough to wake Poe up. “Don’t you agree Poe would sleep much better in a proper bed than sitting on a chair? He’s going to wake up sore all over if he stays like that.”  
  
BB-8 turned its photosensor back to Poe, then rolled back towards him, seemingly convinced by Kaydel’s argument. He sung a series of soft beeps, and Poe’s eyelids fluttered.  
  
“Hey buddy,” he said in a sleepy voice. His gaze turned to Finn laying on the bed, and his expression darkened. “Good evening, Kaydel,” he finally said, mustering up a faint smile and stretching his arms high above his head. “Has General Organa asked to see me?”  
  
She shook her head. “She wants the both of you to get some rest before tomorrow.” She lifted the black bag in front of her. “I also saved some food from the party. We haven’t seen you there at all, and the two of you are probably hungry.”  
  
His shoulders dropped, and he slapped his hands on his thighs before standing up. “Wouldn’t want to disobey her,” he conceded with a grin, but Rey could hear Poe’s heart wasn’t into it.  
  
He leaned briefly over Finn’s asleep figure, and pressed two fingers over his pulse. “Goodnight buddy, see you tomorrow,” he whispered to him. Poe straightened himself and headed towards the door.  
  
Rey stood up after him, and she covered Finn’s hand with her own. “I’ll see you again in the morning, Finn,” she murmured, ignoring the ache in her stomach pit as she realized that tomorrow might be the last time she would see him again before long.

  
Poe and BB-8 said their farewells to Rey and Kaydel outside of the medbay. She watched the pilot walk away slowly, back hunched with tiredness and worry. She felt relieved – she had learnt that Poe liked Finn as much as she liked him. He would watch over him like she would have.  
  
“I forgot to ask you – do you mind sharing a room with someone else?” Kaydel asked after a minute on the outdoor path between the medbay and the living quarters.  
  
Rey stopped walking. It was odd – being asked about what she liked or disliked, giving her a choice at all.  
  
Kaydel’s eyes widened in fear. “General Organa thought that maybe you would like some company for your night here – but it’s completely up to you!” she said precipitately, as if she was afraid she had offended Rey by making her offer.  
  
Rey tried to imagine herself sleeping alone. No – it would feel too much like Jakku.  
  
She shook her head. “I would very much like some company,” Rey replied, and the grimace on Kaydel’s face turned into a soft smile.

Kaydel led her into a room decorated with posters of seaside landscapes and pictures of colorful, strangely shaped fishes.

“Is this your room?” Rey asked Kaydel, and the woman nodded.

“I used to spend all my summers at my uncles’ house on Onderon. They owned a diving shop and would take me on their boat during the weekends. They taught me how to dive.

She stared at a purple and green fish with a monstrous jaw, and smiled absent-mindedly. Rey sat down on the folded bed in front of what she guessed was Kaydel’s bed, with rumpled sheets and another picture of fishes swimming in the ocean hanging on the wall above it.

“But I’m just rambling!” Kaydel said again, in that same precipitated tone than before, as if she had done something wrong. She handed the bag to Rey. “I didn’t know what you liked so I took a bit of everything, but I believe Poe has already picked his favorites.”

“It’s fine,” Rey replied, smiling at the other girl, and Kaydel seemed to relax ever so slightly. Kriff, the food was still warm inside – Rey couldn’t remember the last time she had a hot meal. “I bet even the most awful here tastes better than the rations you can trade where I’m from,” she continued in an amused tone. Jakku seemed to have happened a million years ago. Had she not met BB-8, and then Finn – she would have still been scavenging Star Destroyers for diminishing returns, stuck in the desert, waiting for parents that would never come back for her.

The image of Finn came back in her mind, Finn yelling in pain as Kylo Ren’s lightsaber burned his shoulder, Finn lying unconscious in the snow while she feared that he was dead. The memory felt like a burst of wind in a sandstorm, threatening to bury her under the traitorous sands of Jakku. She muffled a sob that had bubbled in her throat, her hand clutching the greasy paper wrapped around her sandwich.  
  
“Are you alright?” Kaydel asked, panicked, eyes wide. She hesitated, before placing her hand over Rey’s bare shoulder. Her hand felt warm and comforting against her skin, grounding Rey back into the present.

“I’m fine, I’m just… I need to eat,” Rey concluded, fearing that trying to delve deeper into her feelings would just make things worse. She forced herself to smile to Kaydel, because really, none of it was her fault and she didn’t want the woman to feel bad for her.

She dug into the sandwich, sauce spilling in her mouth, and she froze in surprise. She swallowed some of it. It was warm, spicy and salty with a hint of something sweet. It was warm, delicious, and exactly what she needed. She bit off a quarter of the sandwich in one go, and by Riia’s shorts, there was actual meat in it, and not the reconstituted protein paste they mixed in the green goo inside Plutt’s rations. The bread was, in Rey’s mind, perfect – slightly crusty on the outside, soft and airy in the inside.

“It’s the best thing I’ve ever eaten,” Rey explained to Kaydel who had been looking at her expectantly. “And I really mean it,” she continued, before taking another mouthful out of her meal. She had only realized how hungry she was after she took a bite out of the sandwich. Her grief and worry over Finn, over Kylo Ren, over herself and what it had meant to have been chosen by Luke’s lightsaber – they had dulled her inner sensations.

It took her less than two minutes to finish her sandwich, and she rushed to the bag to grab the other one. She briefly crossed Kaydel’s gaze. “Do you want it?” Rey asked, holding the sandwich out before her.

Kaydel shook her head vividly, round eyes on Rey. “I’ve already eaten, don’t worry about me,” she explained, shaking her raised hand before her in a sign of refusal.

Rey ate the other one – this one didn’t have meat but something rich and creamy inside that she guessed was cheese – slower, this time. She wanted to savor it, and she didn’t feel as hungry as she did before.

Once she was done with it, she felt an ache in her stomach, and she realized, amazed, that it was because she felt stuffed. She placed a hand over the stretched skin of her belly. That – and the sensation of drowsiness she started to be aware of – were completely new. She had ingested what would have probably been five or six rations on Jakku in one go. The craziest thing was that the Resistance and Kaydel had given it out so freely to her. Maybe food wasn’t an issue here, or it was a one-time thing to celebrate the special occasion of not having been blown up by the First Order. Nevertheless, Rey felt grateful for it.

“Thank you so much for the food, Kaydel,” Rey began, joining her hands together before her.

“It was delicious, and now I feel like I will never get hungry again,” she continued.

“It’s nothing, really,” Kaydel replied, lowering her gaze towards her knees. “This is the least we could do. You’ve helped the Resistance along with Finn, and tomorrow you’re going to meet with Luke Skywalker on our behalf. You deserve so much more than two sandwiches and a place to sleep.”

Kaydel’s words sent her thoughts towards the future. She had planned on meeting Luke Skywalker to bring him back his lightsaber, but how would he react? Would he even accept it? She had asked the general Organa about it, and she had explained that before being Luke’s, it had been Darth Vader’s saber before he turned to the Dark Side and became the Emperor’s right hand. Thought to be lost after Luke Skywalker fought against his father for the first time, it had somehow ended up among Maz Kanata’s treasures.  
Rey started to feel uneasy when she remembered the visions triggered by the lightsaber the first time she took hold of it. Thankfully, they didn’t reappear when she had to fight Kylo Ren – but who knew how these things worked? Maybe she didn’t so much want to bring the lightsaber back to its rightful owner as she wanted to get rid of it. 

She could show up to Luke Skywalker’s planet, bring the saber back, offer him to come back with her and let him deal with Kylo Ren himself, while she could bring her help to the Resistance as the pilot of the Millennium Falcon – and nothing more than that. It was a pleasant fantasy, but it would be so silly of her to believe that it could happen. She felt that bigger forces, or perhaps the one and only Force itself that seemed to rule all over the galaxy’s beings, had decided to her fate already, and she didn’t even have a say in it.  
  
“Rey,” Kaydel said softly, and Rey jumped a little when she felt Kaydel’s hand over hers.

“I’m sorry, I was just thinking,” Rey apologized.

Kaydel shook her head. “It’s okay, it’s just…” she hesitated a little, before she pointed towards the corner of her own mouth. “You’ve got sauce there.”

Rey stuck out her tongue, tasting the sweet and spicy sauce that had started to dry off on her skin. She probably looked ridiculous, and perhaps wouldn’t even have noticed hadn’t Kaydel pointed it out to her.

Kriff, what if she had showed like that on Ach-To in front of Luke Skywalker? It was illogical, she or someone else would have noticed and she would have fixed it. But it was too late, the image seared into her mind.

Luke Skywalker, I am Rey. Your old lightsaber chose me. I can apparently use the Force, and I love the Resistance sandwiches.

Please, Master Skywalker, you’re the last hope of the Resistance. I am being serious here, despite what the sauce smeared all around my mouth might tell you about my character.  
It was so absurd she couldn’t help bursting into laughter, and she laughed until her belly hurt and a stitch appeared against her ribs. Kaydel’s mouth had curled into a perfect circle, but even she couldn’t help but laugh in her turn, even though she couldn’t possibly understand what was so funny. 

Rey couldn’t remember the last time she had laughed that hard. She wiped her tears with her index once she could catch her breath again. Kaydel was nearly in the same state, breathing out loudly with her eyes moist and sparkling.

“I think I needed that,” Rey began, feeling her lips stretched out in a big smile.

“Yes,” Kaydel replied, grinning. Rey realized it was the first time she saw something bigger than a polite smile on the woman’s face. It was a good look on her, she decided.  
  
Kaydel had handed Rey spare pajamas and left her alone to put them on, herself retreating to the refresher. Rey quickly tossed aside her old clothes and grabbed the clean fabric of the night clothes. She sighed in pleasure as the clothes brushed against her skin. The fabric wouldn’t do as good as a job of isolating her from the exterior temperatures compared to her old outfit. But it wasn’t the point, because she was going to sleep in a real bed with clean, hard-wearing sheets and a duvet on top, with a roof over her head and four walls that would isolate her completely from the elements. 

It also felt much, much softer against her skin and didn’t smell like her own weeks old sweat.

She slid under the sheets, enjoying the cleanliness of the fabric underneath her skin. They felt cool against her, and she wanted to rub herself against them like a luggabeast in a waterhole.

She heard the click of the refresher door and turned her head as it opened. Kaydel stepped out, her blond hair untied resting over her shoulders. Rey hadn’t expected the other woman's hair to be that long. She was wearing a nightgown instead of pajamas, probably something she had brought from home. Rey guessed the Resistance didn’t provide their soldiers nightclothes with frilly sleeves. She smiled to Rey as she walked to her own bed. 

“This is the light switch,” Kaydel explained after she sat down on her bed, her finger over a switch placed on the wall above the head of the bed. Rey raised her head and realized she had the same one to the side of her room.

“Rey, if you need anything, please tell me. Even if I am asleep.”

Rey nodded. She hoped she wouldn’t need to.

“Can I turn off the light?” Kaydel asked, a hint of worry in her voice.

“Sure,” Rey shrugged. She was used to the darkness, whenever it was during her nights on Jakku or when the sandstorm clouds were so thick they completely covered the sunlight.

“Have a nice night, Rey,” Kaydel wished her. There was a clicking sound and the bedroom was plunged in darkness.

“Nice night to you too, Kaydel,” Rey replied, and she let her head fall back on the soft pillow.

She wasn’t afraid of the dark. 

She forced herself to breathe in and out slowly, mimicking the steady rhythm of someone asleep.

Her leg twitched, and she felt like falling out of her bed, and then her back hit the tree behind her, searing pain spreading to her body and to her head.

The snow, cold underneath her cheek.

Finn yelling in pain, red-blue-purple flashes over her eyes.

Out of breath, she surged from her bed, her hand frantically searching against for the switch on the wall.  
  
She turned the light on, blinking as the darkness disappeared and the colorful fishes reappeared on the walls. Her eyes landed on the first one she could find, the one Kaydel had looked at earlier so fondly. It was ugly, but Rey liked its colors – green like the forests on Takodana, and a warm, different purple that the one created by the blue and red lightsaber colliding together.  
  
She heard the rustle of sheets on the other side of the room. Kaydel had tossed her sheets aside, throwing a very concerned glance at Rey. Before Rey could apologize, she had stood up from her bed and was sitting down on the edge of Rey’s bed.  
  
“Tell me about the fish,” Rey began, the words escaping her mouth before she had the time to think them through. “That one,” she continued, pointing to its picture.  
  
Kaydel’s expression softened. “This one is called the Depth Razorfish,” Kaydel told her. “As the name says, it lives in the trenches deep down the Trion Ocean of Onderon, where it preys on the herbivorous species. Its tooth are fused at the tip of its mouth, to make one pair of very sharp, razor-like teeth it uses to kill its prey.”  
  
Rey let her head fall back on her pillow as Kaydel kept telling her all that she knew about the razorfish: what species it actually hunted, how they were born, lived, reproduced. Rey learned that they never stopped growing and that the pretty colors were only present on the male ones, and that the prettier the colors the more likely they were to attract a female.

 Kaydel’s voice was soft and reassuring, her passion for all the aquatic species coming to light in her words.

Rey felt asleep as Kaydel was in the middle of describing their mating dance.


	2. Ahch-To

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey trains with Luke Skywalker to become a Jedi.

Rey should have guessed that after fifteen years in exile, Luke Skywalker wasn't going to be willing to come back to the Resistance just because she showed up at his doorstep.

It would have definitely made things easier, but Rey was getting used to seeing her life getting increasingly complicated.

 "You need training," he had argued. "I can't let you go back and risk you facing Kylo Ren again without preparation." He had then stared at her like he could read deep into her soul, and maybe he had, in some way. She could see into his eyes that he knew what he was talking about, and if half the things about Luke Skywalker, legendary hero of the Rebellion were true, she had no reason not to believe him.

 Not that she had much of a choice but to obey him. Coming back without Luke Skywalker was out of the question. That's the least she could do for the Resistance, after everything they had done for Finn and for her.

 Ahch-To, with its rocky hills and sparse areas of green grass surrounded by high waters, looked like a planet on the decline, one world-wide catalysm away from turning into a deep and unhospitable ocean. Rey liked feeling the firm ground beneath her feet, so unlike the traitorous sands she used to walk on, on Jakku. The sea, however, scared her, and the first few nights she had spent on the planet were plagued by nightmares of herself being knocked away by the wind and falling into the water.

 "I think you would like it," Rey told Kaydel once over the commlink. She had been mandated to report to the Resistance once a day, to make sure everything was okay with them. Rey had always had Kaydel on the line so far. It felt nice to hear a familiar voice when you were stranded at the edge of the known galaxy, holed up in a cabin and watching the rain pouring from the glassless window. "Most of the planet is a giant ocean. Who knows what kind of fish probably lives down there?"

 

"I should ask General Organa to follow you there," Kaydel joked. "I could have borrowed the diving equipment from our special operations teams and showed you the joys of diving!"

 

Rey laughed. "I do not think Master Skywalker would appreciate you distracting me from his lessons."

 

"And I don't think the special operations teams would be too pleased by me borrowing their equipment," Kaydel replied. "How is training going?"

 

"Fine, I guess," Rey replied. "It's hard to know if he's satisfied with any of my progress."

 

It was hard to know anything about Luke, really. He didn't talk much, and seemed to always do his best to reign in his true feelings when they had a discussion.

 

"I lifted a huge rock yesterday, and it was bigger than the rock I lifted the day before."

 

She heard Kaydel's clear laugh at the other end of the commlink. "You make it sound so _dull_!"

 

"It's just that I don't believe the First Order will be stopped by me and Luke Skywalker hurling huge rocks with our mind at their ships."

 

"Well, if you find a big enough rock…"

 

Thankfully, that wasn't all that Luke Skywalker was willing to teach her. They trained from dawn to dusk. If the weather was good enough, they spent the day outdoors, where Rey learned how to use the Force while fighting, like an extra sense, or for interacting with her environment - which was mostly moving rocks with her mind. The other days, they huddled around the fire in Luke's stone cabin where she honed her mind-reading skills, as well as learned how to shield herself from having her own mind read.

 

"You are sure I can try to read your mind?" Rey had asked the first time. She remembered well the disgust she had felt when Kylo Ren's dark presence invaded her head, rummaging through her memories like she had rummaged through wreckages in search of something valuable.

 

"I don't think you'll be able too, anyway," he replied dryly. He was right, and Rey found herself against an invisible wall, seeing nothing but darkness, hearing nothing but silence.

 

"This is what I want Kylo Ren to see if you ever find yourself captured by him again," he said, voice heavy. There was a flicker of sadness in his gaze, and Rey feared that it was more a likely possibility for her future rather than a worst-case scenario.

 

It had taken her about a week and a half to settle into her new rhythm. She was used to intense physical effort from her life on Jakku, but using and learning the Force was like training a muscle she didn't even know she had, before she touched the lightsaber on Takodana. She felt exhausted at the end of each day, finishing her bowl of boiled vegetables grown in Luke Skywalker's garden in a few minutes before lying down on her couch, eyelids heavy with tiredness.

 

Once she got used to it, though, she found her sleep turning lighter and lighter, finding herself waking in the middle of the night by the loud rain pouring down outside. Her eyes flicked open to look at the embers of the fire, at R2-D2 powered down near the doorframe, and at Luke Skywalker's sleeping frame, his covers rising and falling in . It always made her think of Finn, still in a coma according to the news from the Resistance, lying still a thousand light-years away from her. She felt her eyes well up and she turned away from him, staring at the neatly piled up stones that made up the wall.

Chewbacca had declined to go up the hill and live with them. He had argued that the Millennium Falcon was deeply needing some repairs if they had to make a quick exit. Rey was pretty sure the Wookie just wanted to be alone to mourn Han Solo. And perhaps, to avoid talking to Luke Skywalker, judging by the glacial tone of the sole conversation they shared when Chewbacca told them he would rather stay on the shore. She longed for her familiar presence during nights like this. She had to fight her urge to run down these stairs, jump back into the Falcon to say hello - and perhaps fire up the Falcon's engines and leave her master behind. It was unreasonable, though - The Resistance needed Luke Skywalker, and Luke Skywalker needed her to be a diligent student.

 

 She felt so lonely during these nights. Her mind running back to Finn, who had been the first person in her life to come back for her.

To his friend Poe Dameron who she was sure would take care of him.

To General Organa who had treated her like she was her own daughter and who had trusted her with bringing Luke back to the Resistance.

And finally to Kaydel, the voice that kept her nightmares away, the voice that made her remember everyday that she finally had found a place to come back to.

 

Rey would lift every single rock on Ahch-To if it was what it took for her to seem them all again.

 

 

"Hi, Rey, I've got great news today," Kaydel began cheerfully, and Rey felt her heart jump in her chest.

 

"Finn is awake! He will still need to stay in the medbay for a few days, but he's completely in the clear!"

 

Rey was so overwhelmed she couldn't even speak. She was grateful that Luke Skywalker left her alone in the stone cabin whenever she made her daily call, because she could feel tears running down her cheeks that she was unable to stop. It felt like she was lifted high above the ground, that she was as light as the seabirds who nested in the cliffs and let the strong winds carry them up.

 

"He asked for you! Poe has explained where you were and he hopes that everything is alright and that you're okay. He said he couldn't wait to see you again!" Kaydel continued.

 

"Thank you so much," Rey managed to say once she had gained back some composure.

 

"Rey, it's nothing, he's a hero of the Resistance now, just like you! It would have been pretty terrible of us not to look after him!"

 

Finn was a hero, so much more than she had been. She didn't know if it was the Force, another higher power or just fate that had decided to spare Finn, but Rey silently thanked every divinity she had ever heard of for saving her friend.

 

"We all miss you," Kaydel added, her voice a little softer. "I hope everything is well on Ahch-To."

 

"I miss you too," Rey said frankly. She suddenly felt like it wasn't right for her to stay here - she should be at Finn's bedside, keeping him company while he finished his recovery; she should be helping the Resistance in any way she could, fighting under General Organa's orders or being part of a squadron under Poe's command. She should be talking to Kaydel because she was doing something important for the Resistance, and not just to report that they hadn't been found by the First Order yet, without being able to give a good guess as to when she would be back.

 

Still, the news had inspired her with a new energy that no meal or good night's sleep before had given to her since she arrived on Ahch-To. Without even asking for Luke's permission, she had run down the steps between the old temple and the Millennium Falcon to tell the good news to Chewbacca. The Wookie had pulled her in a warm, tight hug, and she had decided on the spot that she would, for once, eat with him instead of climbing back up straight away. She could allow herself a little break, with all the efforts she had made so far. According to the information about the First Order's whereabouts that Kaydel had told her, they hadn't seemed very eager to launch a counter-attack just yet, anyway. What difference could two hours make?

 

Rey hadn't even let Luke Skywalker a chance to say anything once she had climbed the stairs back. Her legs ached, but she felt far from tired, and without a word, she grabbed her staff and held it out before her.

 

"Let's do fight training today," Rey proposed. Luke Skywalker nodded in silence, and went out to search for his wooden sword.

 

Luke Skywalker had always been a worthy opponent, even for someone like her who learned how to defend herself at an early age against potential thieves. Despite his age, he was still physically strong and agile, and his connection with the Force seemed to allow him to decipher her moves two or three steps ahead, and he had sent her rolling on the floor more times that she could count.

 

This time, it was different. She felt as if she could almost sense the Force running through her veins, enhancing her senses. Her instinct was much sharper than usual, and she could see through Luke's fighting strategy as clearly as if he was spelling it out for her. She wondered if he was doing it on purpose, so she pushed herself harder. Putting all her strenght behind each of her blow, her staff slammed loudly against the training sword, the shock resonating through her arms and the sound echoing across the hill. The light smirk on Luke Skywalker's face that she usually saw when he defeated her easily was gone, replaced by a concentrated look.

 

It was fight between equals, Rey thought, and the thought was exhilarating, filling her with confidence. Rarely before she had reached such a level of concentration, and she was mesmerized by the power of the Force when she used it to enhance her skills. She could win this, anticipate his moves and counter-moves, find the flaw in his defense.

 

She moved fast, relying both on her agility and on her Force-enhanced senses to dodge and parry each of Luke Skywalker's blows. She would even pay herself the luxury of leaving an opening to try and trap him, but she quickly realizes that Luke Skywalker was smarter than that. He tapped deep into his own connection with the Force, too, moreso than he ever had before.

 

It was a true battle between two Force users. The thought sent adrenaline shooting through her veins, and she grinned as he parried another heavy blow before attempting a counter-attack. They each alternated winning and losing ground to the other, stepping up their game until one of them would slip up and make a fatal mistake that would bring them their defeat.

 

She felt something tug at her heart when she spotted an opening in Luke Skywalker's defense. It was her chance to strike. She feinted, twisting her staff at the last moment to strike a heavy blow to Luke's knee, sending him stumbling backward. Filled with pride, she surged forward, holding her staff with her two hands like a spear. She was too quick for him, she believed.

 

He blocked her attack with such strenght that she lost her balance. Before she had the time to steady herself, he had slid the tip of the training sword over her wrist, not strongly enough to hurt her, but enough to make her let go of her staff. Another quick blow to the staff itself was enough to send it flying behind her.

 

He threw her a stern glance, signifying that training was over. She swallowed, feeling her throat tighten as she went to get her staff back where it had fallen.

 

"What did I do wrong? Okay, I got too greedy and rushed at you when I shouldn't-"

 

He raised his hand before him, interrupting her.

 

"You let yourself get enthralled by your own power," he said coldly.

 

I almost managed to beat you," she replied, feeling frustrated. "Isn't what this whole training is about? Teaching me to use the Force so I could help the Resistance face Kylo Ren, Snoke and the First Order?"

 

"Not like this," Luke Skywalker said softly, almost in a murmur. "I saw in your eyes how prideful you were feeling. Unless you reign it in, it will be the cause of your demise, one way or another."

 

He turned away from her, sheathing the training sword and walking towards the stone cabin.

 

Rey bit off her tongue. There was no point in trying to reason with him when he was convinced the conversation was over. If he thought that she was foolish, she wasn't going to be the one to give him a stick to beat her with.

 

That night, after dinner, he pulled a small rectangular box out of his wooden chest. This didn't happen all that often, and Rey had never seen him pull anything but data chips out of it before.

 

The box only held a rather thick black string and a set of medium-sized wooden beads, finely polished. Rey counted twenty-four of them.

 

"I want you to place all of these beads on that string; without your hands, of course."

 

Rey took the string and the bead in her hands, and frowned, trying to concentrate. The bead was lifted in the air easily enough, but it refused to stay still, instead spinning on itself in mid-air. She also tried to straighten the thread with her mind, only resulting in the thread breaking as if she had pulled on both ends with all her strenght.

 

Luke Skywalker remained silent, his eyebrows slightly raised, before reaching again into the chest, and handing Rey a small pouch with many other similar black strings inside.

  


"Rey, are you alright?" Kaydel asked. Even through the commlink, Rey could hear the worry in her voice. It was a nice feeling to now that someone seemed to care for her, but at the same time, she was ashamed that Kaydel could sense her trouble as easily.

 

Rey bit her lips, clutching her hands against the black string. Only four beads in three days, she reminded herself painfully. She wanted to lie as she did yesterday and the day before, but Kaydel seemed to hear right past through it.

 

"I don't know," Rey finally answered.

 

I don't know if Luke Skywalker is ordering me to make that bracelet as punishment or as training; I don't know if I'm going in the right direction with my training, or even if there is a right direction at all, she thought.

 

"It's just… so hard to understand Luke Skywalker, sometimes."

 

"You should really tell him that," Kaydel suggested, a sense of urgency in her voice. "How you feel, and all that."

 

"I don't know if there is really a point. I don't think it would change his mind. And he's the only teacher I will ever get."

 

There was a short silence, and then Kaydel spoke again. "It's all up to you. I think you shouldn't be afraid of speaking up, to him or to anyone else. I'm glad you finally told me that you were not fine. Your well-being matters to all of us."

 

Rey leaned her head against the stone brick wall, folding her legs against her chest. It would be bad if she, indeed, kept on feeling unwell like she was. It would temper with her Jedi training, and Luke Skywalker had told her at length that sadness led to the Dark Side in some way or another. It was easier to start with what _didn't_ lead one to the Dark Side, really.

 

"Don't worry, Luke Skywalker is still watching me close enough to warn you if anything goes out of hand, like the last time," Rey said, a little harshly that she had wanted her words to come out.

 

There was another silence over the commlink, longer than before.

 

"Maybe that's what Luke Skywalker is mostly concerned about, but I am not. I know Finn and Poe aren't concerned about that, either. We hope you feel fine because we care about you, Rey. You deserve better than feeling lonely on a planet at the far edge of the known galaxy. We want you to be happy. I want you to be happy."

 

She sounded a bit hurt, and her tone pulled at Rey's heartstrings.

 

"I need to learn how to be a Jedi. For the sake of the Resistance."

 

"Helping us and feeling fine aren't mutually exclusive. We all have bad days here, but when things get too tough we always find someone to share our thoughts with. You need to have that, too. And if it's fine with you, I'm more than willing to be that person while you're away."

 

Rey felt something unclench deep in her chest. It was like coming home after a hard day of scavenging, tossing her sand-covered clothes aside, the AT-AT's wreckage somewhat shielding her from the heat of the day or the cold of the night.

 

"I'd love that, Kaydel. Thanks for taking care of me," Rey replied sincerely, feeling the corners of her lips stretch upwards until her cheeks started to hurt.

 

It was spring in Ahch-To, though Rey didn't feel like the temperatures were rising up during the days ever since she arrived there, thanks to the sea surrounding them tempering the weather. The hours spent in daylight definitely increased, and she used it at her advantage, waking up at bit ealier everyday to climb down the steps and say hello to Chewbacca, or exploring more thoroughtly the island Luke Skywalker had settled on. The Jedi Temple was out of bonds since day one, and his warnings were clear enough to dissuade her from ever trying to disobey him on that point.

 

There were some other spots on the island she was more interested in.

 

"Do you still need these?" Rey asked one day, designing some of the formplast pots lying on the workbench inside another stone cabin that was set up as Luke's (and now Luke and Rey both) workshop. There were still traces of dried up soil at the bottom of the pots, and Rey guessed Luke had used them when he started setting up his vegetable garden.

 

"Not really. What do you have in mind?" he asked, his blue eyes looking directly into her own.

 

"When I was on Jakku, I used to collect the few flowers that managed to grow in the desert. I want to be able to bring back some of the ones growing here, back to the Resistance base once our training will be finished."

 

She spoke in an even voice, but she made sure to look back directly into Luke's eyes. So he would know that she was determined to come back to the Resistance with him sooner than later.

 

He didn't protest, and she piled five pots together, before unhooking some of the gardening tools hanging from the ceiling and leaving the cabin, taking the direction of the spring she had discovered during one of her early morning hikes. Lack of trees excepted, the place was all Rey had ever dreamed off : cristalling running water, soft, bright green grass, and small, colorful flowers.

 

One plant for herself, one for Finn, one for Poe, one for General Organa and one for Kaydel. That seemed about right.

 

When Rey triumphantly held out before her the bracelet with all of the twenty-four beads on the string, she should have expected Luke to pull out another rectangular box out of the chest.

Forty-eight polished wooden beads, smaller than the ones of her finished bracelet, and a red string, thinner than the black one.

She closed her eyes, letting the frustration that built up as she laid her eyes on the box's content wash over her. She would do this, break as many strings and let as many beads fall to the ground as she needed to.

She briefly looked up at him, and started making the first bead levitate off her hand.

 

Rey put on the necklace - ninety-six crystal beads half as big as the nail of her little finger and a string as thin as Rakkazak silk - and lifted her head slowly, until her gaze crossed Luke Skywalker's. She mentally prepared herself for whatever other challenge he might throw in her way. Adopting a still, neutral expression, she instead focused on the call she had received earlier.

 Kaydel had invited Finn over to the communications room. His voice felt like warm rays of sunshine breaking through the clouds after days of pouring rain. It was so good to get to hear her finally, he said, speaking so fast she was barely making out his words but it didn't matter one bit. She got the overall message - Finn was fine, happy with the Resistance, integrating himself wonderfully, feeling appreciated and valued for using his heart as much as he used his brain.

"I got to fly a A-Wing yesterday!" he told her. "It was incredible, amazing, Poe was with me of course, and I almost crashed the thing before we got out of the hangar but then we finally soared into the sky and it was just so-"

 Rey knew the feeling all too well - when she had sat down in the Falcon's pilot seat to escape the TIE-fighters on Jakku, and before that, when she had managed to fix that almost intact ship she had found after a sandstorm on Jakku. Only to let it slip from her fingers, she remembered bitterly. It wasn't all that long ago, but her life had changed so much in such a short time frame that it sometimes seemed like it was a different person who had waited alone for her parents on Jakku. She didn't dwell on the memory - instead, she pictured the A-Wing taking altitude, herself laughing in joy while watching the aircraft pull itself away from the planet's gravity.

 Next time they would try to leave the planet's atmosphere, Finn told her. It made her long for the Millennium's Falcon cockpit, for its navigation computer coming back life under her fingers, for Chewbacca's comforting presence as her co-pilot.

 

Soon, she promised herself.

 

Predictably, Luke Skywalker pulled something out of the chest, but it wasn't a box. Instead, it was an old datachip. Rey's eyes lightened up, and she leaned forward to take it as he was holding it out for her.

Her heart started to beat faster as she turned on the datapad he had let her borrow. It seemed to take forever for the pad to load the content of the chip, but once Rey laid her eyes on the screen, she couldn't keep herself from letting out a scream of mixed joy and surprise.

 

Probably pulled from the old Jedi archives, the piece of data was a step-to-step tutorial on building a lightsaber, complete with lengthy explanations on each part's purpose and detailed schematics.

 

"So I'm going to be a Jedi?" Rey asked before thinking her words through.

 

It was hard to tell with Luke's beard hiding most of his mouth, but she could have sworn he had smiled.

 

"It takes more than building your own lightsaber to become a Jedi - and even a Jedi needs to keep on learning new things through their entire lives. However, you're definitely taking a new step in that direction."

 

"When do we start?" Rey asked. Her fingers were aching to get to work, manipulating the frail metallic pieces to forge her weapon.

 

"Soon," Luke promised. "This place is ill-equipped for making more than a rudimentary lightsaber. We're going back to the Resistance Base."

 

He raised his hand before him, gesturing to her to keep listening.

"But first, we need to empty the Jedi Temple out of everything we can carry. Tomorrow, we'll ask Chewbacca for help. It shouldn't take very long with the three of us."

 

Rey nodded. She could wait out a little longer.

 

Rey woke up before dawn to pack up the last things she would bring back to the new Resistance base. She double-checked everything, clothes, equipment, weapons; she made sure all the artefacts found inside the Jedi temple were correctly wedged so they wouldn't be damaged as they made the jumps in and out of hyperspace. Rey felt the same uneasiness around them as she did when she first stepped in the Temple, as if thousands of sandbugs were trying to gnaw at her mind. She breathed in and out slowly, chasing the unpleasant sensation from her consciousness.

 Once Rey was satisfied, she allowed herself to sit cross-legged near the edge of the cliff to take one last look at the sunrise over the ocean.

 She wasn't going to miss it one bit, she thought. She learned that the Resistance base had relocated to Elom, a cold, barren planet of the Outer Rim. From Kaydel's description, the weather was even less clement than Ahch-To's; and yet Rey couldn't wait to be there. She would move to Hoth if it was where her friends had decided to set camp.

Hearing footsteps on stone behind her, Rey turned her head to see Luke Skywalker climbing down the stairs. His left arm was raised in the air, and behind him, Rey saw R2-D2 floating half a meter above the ground. She couldn't help but smile at the sight. She wasn't quite sure, but it seemed to her that Luke Skywalker was smiling under his beard, too. "Good morning, Rey," he greeted her. "is everything ready?" "Good morning, Master Luke," she replied, standing up from her vantage point. "I checked everything again before dawn. We can leave right now, if you wish to do so." Luke Skywalker looked at the sunrise over the sea, and took a deep breath. His eyes clouded, his shoulders sagging. Rey couldn't help but empathize with him. She imagined that he thought he belonged there, like she had believed that she belonged to Jakku. And now, she seemed almost reluctant to leave. As if he had read her thoughts, Rey thought not for the first time, he looked down at her. "Let's go meet my sister again, then," he declared, before walking down the last steps to the shore. 

Rey sat on the pilot's seat. She smiled at Chewbacca who was already strapping himself in his seat. She remembered her own mix of fear and anticipation when she had sat there the last time, when she took the direction of Ahch-To, all these weeks ago.  
Now, she felt serene, because she wasn't flying towards the unknown, but was coming back to the people she cared about, to fight for a cause she believed in. She was done waiting for someone to come back to tell her what she should do with her life.

The Falcon came alive again under her and Chewbacca's hands, the engine sounding much smoother than the first time she had flown it. She still couldn't wrap her mind around the idea that the ship technically belonged to her as much as he belonged to Chewbacca. That was what Han would have wanted, he had said.

I will treat you well, she mentally said to the old ship, as well as you've treated me, and she brushed a finger against the control panel.

Now it was time for her to begin her new life. Her very own life, she told herself with a smile.


	3. Elom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey comes back to the new Resistance base on Elom. She deepens her relationship with her friends, and learns something about Finn and Poe.

The Falcon's outside captors informed her that the outdoor temperature was below freezing, but that hadn't stopped a large crowd to gather in front of the ship as Rey landed.  
She put on a woolen blanket over her bare shoulders before stepping out. Her feet made the short, frozen grass crackle, and she tugged the fabric closer against her chest, before looking up at the General Organa. She was standing in front of the entire assistance, a welcoming expression on her face. Words weren't needed.

The general wrapped her arms around her back, holding her tightly as she had done the first time they met.

"Welcome back among us, Rey," she said solemnly after pulling out, her hands resting on Rey's shoulders.

"Thank you, General," Rey replied, humbled, bowing briefly before her.

General Organa's hand lingered on her arm before she walked about to greet Luke Skywalker and Chewbacca. Behind her stood Finn, leaning on a pair of crutches.

"Finn!" she yelled, wrapping her arms around her friend's neck and laying a light kiss on his cheek. She heard the soft thud of one of Finn's crutch landing on the ground behind her, before feeling Finn's arm pressing around her back. Finn hugged until Rey suddenly felt him lose his balance and fall into her arms.

"Easy there, pal," said a familiar voice, and Rey felt a pair of arms wrap around Finn's waist, pulling her friend back.

Rey recognized Poe Dameron, helping Finn to stand up straight again by putting Finn's arm around his own shoulders.

She felt guilty at seeing that Finn had trouble to stand on his two legs. Finn shot her an apologetic smile as she held out the crutch he had dropped to him. Poe untangled himself from Finn, and pulled Rey into a brief, warm hug.

"I think everyone on base wants to say hi to you," he told her with a wink. Around her, Rey saw a multitude of smiling and hopeful faces. It was a bit too much - she had been no one her whole life, and now everyone welcomed her with open arms. She was grateful to receive their affection, but she wondered if she really deserved it, if she would live up to their expectations.

They shook her hand briefly or quickly pulled her into their arms. They all introduced themselves, and Rey did her best to store their names and faces in her memory.

Snap was patting her shoulder and telling her how excited he was at the idea of flying with a Force user when she spotted Kaydel in the crowd. Next to the tall pilot, she looked even smaller. Kaydel saw her too, and her lips stretched into a smile that warmed Rey up much more efficiently than the blanket on her shoulders.

"Rey," she greeted her in a soft voice, before going in for the friendly, quick hug that Rey had received many times before. Without thinking, Rey locked her arms over Kaydel's back, pressing her against her chest.  
Kaydel's body seemed to radiate heat even through her uniform and the thick coat she wore on top of it. Rey felt something blossom in her chest as she held Kaydel's frame against her. It was like the sensation of rightness and levity she would feel after their calls back on Ahch-To, but much, much stronger.

Rey felt fine, in a way she hadn't felt fine ever before.

She briefly wondered if it was what it felt like to come home.

 

The Resistance base had been set up in a former Imperial Lommite mine, Kaydel, Finn and Poe explained to Rey. The hangers, facilities and living quarters had been built inside the walls of the main circular pit that dwelt deep inside the planet's crust. At the bottom of the pit started a complex network of mineshafts that the Resistance was renovating to turn them into warehouses and emergency shelters.

"This is where the Empire used to make the enslaved Elomin work during their occupation of the planet," Poe told her, disgust perceptible in his voice. They were taking an elevator going downwards to the housing quarters.

"They're allowing us to re-use the old structure in exchange for protection against the First Order."

"What are the Elomin like?" Rey asked. She only had learned of them as the autochtonous people of Elom in an Imperial report about the Lommite extraction yields throughout the Empire.

"They were a bit wary of us at first," Kaydel explained. "They saw us more as an offspring of the New Republic that had failed to protect itself at the beginning. General Organa convinced them that we were the good guys, and that our recklessness was the precise thing their really stiff and organized military lacked."

"You're probably going to meet them soon, anyway. Some Elomin already decided to join the Resistance and they're all very eager to meet a Jedi. They're firm believers in the Force," Finn concluded as the elevator stopped and its doors opened.

"Rey, I almost forgot," Kaydel asked in the hallway, suddenly stopping. "They've put us in the same room, since Poe and Finn are already bunking together and they figured I was the person around your age that you knew best on the base," she explained. "But you don't have to share a room with me if you don't want to. That can be quickly fixed."

Rey was surprised at Kaydel's suggestion. When she had pictured herself living at the Resistance base, she would always see herself in Kaydel's room, opening her eyes to see the photographs of colorful fishes or gorgeous submarine landscapes.

Maybe it was Kaydel's polite way of saying that she didn't really want to have her back in her quarters, that it had just been a one-time thing on D'Qar because Rey had just needed a place to sleep. Maybe Kaydel had just been doing her job all along, nothing more, Rey worried, feeling her heart sink in her chest.

"I really don't mind sharing a room with you, Kaydel… but is that okay with you?" Rey said tentatively.

Kaydel's eyes widened, as if she hadn't really understood why she just heard.

"It's okay with me, Rey. More than okay," she finally replied, smiling softly, and Rey felt that feeling of wellness growing in her heart again.

Poe chuckled behind them. "Okay, now that it's settled let's unpack your things because your bag is quite heavy, Rey," Poe teased, lifting up the luggage in his right hand.

 

Between the four of them, it didn't take long to set up Rey's side of the room. Rey and Poe made the bed while Kaydel put Rey's clothes in the small closet at the head of the bed, and Finn was unpacking the content of Rey's bag, sitting on the edge of Kaydel's bed. The mood was relaxed and joyful, filling Rey's heart with happiness. If she looked back on it, she had only known Finn for a few hours, Poe for even less, and she had more conversations with Kaydel over a commlink that face to face. But it felt like she had known them for a long time, that they were old friends reunited after a long absence.

Her first evening flew by quickly, between having dinner in the mess hall, her first meal in weeks that wasn't quick-raising rationed bread and vegetable soup, meeting some more Resistance members that were on duty when she arrived, and catching up with Finn and Poe and Kaydel on the finer details of what happened while she was gone. She didn't see either Luke Skywalker, General Organa and Chewbacca. She guessed the three of them had a lot of catching up to do, as well.

Poe poked his finger at Finn's cheek who hadn't said anything for a few minutes. Finn jumped to attention.

"Sorry", he apologized, "I was just zoning out a bit."

"It's fine," Kaydel replied. Rey pinched her lips. Finn looked tired, much more than Poe, Kaydel or herself. He was still recovering, she told herself, he just needed more time to be back in full shape.

Poe stood up and put a hand on Finn's good shoulder. "Let's go back to our room, you know what Dr. Kalonia said about getting enough sleep," he said softly, a tender smile on his lips. Finn's eyes sparkled or so it seemed to Rey. He smiled back at Poe, before grabbing his crutches leaning against the back of his chair. He could stand up with these, and yet as he walked out of the mess hall with Poe, the pilot let his hand rest over Finn's back, as if he was afraid Finn was going to fall backwards at any moment.

Rey was glad Finn had Poe Dameron to look out for him while she was away.

 

Rey wasn't feeling particularly tired when she and Kaydel went back to their quarters. The trip back had just been her taking off and landing, and letting the navigation computer calculate the Hyperdrive route to Elom. The trip took several hours with nothing to do besides meditate with Luke Skywalker or play Dejarik with Chewbacca.

She stepped inside the refresher room. Back on Ahch-To, she only had access to the sonic refresher inside the Falcon when she visited Chewbacca, or heated up some water over the fire. It was nice to know that she could take her time for a proper shower.

She caught her reflection in the glass, and jumped a bit at the image. She looked older than the last time she had gotten a good look at herself, before leaving for Ahch-To. It was as if her eyes had somehow grown smaller, even though it was impossible. Her cheeks had filled up a bit, thanks to being able to eat to her heart's content. She removed her jacket and her blouse, taking in her broader shoulders, running her fingers over the strong muscles. This was a change she liked, and she smiled, remembering how skinny she looked before.  
She looked up, this time focusing on her hair. The winds on Ahch-To always undid her buns, and she had given up on tying them, instead letting them float around her head. They had curled and turned brittle thanks to both the wind, the rain and the sea spray. This wasn't a change she liked at all, and she winced when her fingers tangled themselves in her damaged hair.

"Is there something wrong?" Kaydel asked, raising her head from her pillow, and Rey realized she had left the door open. The other woman briefly looked at her chest before her eyes widened and her cheeks took on a delicate shade of pink.

"Nothing, I mean, it's just my hair isn't what it used to be," Rey snorted, because it sounded like such a petty thing to be worried about.

"I see," Kaydel replied, and she was looking directly into her eyes, with an intensity in her gaze that made it look like something terrible was going to happen if she broke eye contact. She stood up from her bed and closed the gap between them.

"I have something for that," she continued. "You were going to take a shower, right? I have some conditioner you can use to make your hair smoother." She pointed to a pink bottle covered in Aurebesh writing sitting at the bottom of the water refresher. "Just shampoo first, rinse your hair, put the conditioner on your hair, let it sit a few minutes and rinse again."

"Got it, thanks Kaydel," Rey nodded enthusiastically. She was always so nice, Rey thought, feeling her cheeks heat up. Suddenly, she was aware of how close they were standing together, close enough so that Rey could perfectly make out the shade of brown of Kaydel's eyes, the curve of her eyelashes, the shape of her lips and how soft her blond hair looked.

"So, um, see you soon?" Kaydel finally asked, slightly ducking her head to the side, and Rey wondered if she hadn't just zoned out like Finn did earlier.

"Of course, I mean, very soon!" she babbled, and Kaydel smiled before stepping back and slowly closing the door between them.

 

The shower went fine until it was time to use the conditioner. After frictioning her hair with her conditioner-coated fingers for a good minute, Rey wondered if it was really how one was supposed to do it. Would Kaydel find her dumb for asking her about it? On the other hand, what if it damaged her hair even worse? What would she look like if she stood before General Organa looking even worse than when she came back to Ahch-To?

She stepped out of the refresher cabin, taking a towel and drying herself up quickly before opening the door and peeking out her head through the opening.

"Kaydel, how do you put the conditioner on?"

She looked up from the datapad she was reading, her gaze locking again with Rey's.

"Hang on," she said as she put her datapad aside.

"Let me show you, okay?" Kaydel asked. Rey nodded, feeling herself relax a little. She really needed to get used to the idea that people were willing to help her, around here.

Rey stood in front of the mirror, staying still as Kaydel took a comb and ran it in her hair. Rey had untangled the bulk of her hair knots before stepping under the water, but some remained that Kaydel undid delicately. It was very pleasant, and surprising painless, as Kaydel worked strand by strand, holding each at the roots firmly before running them through the comb. Rey had never cared much for her hair outside of making sure they weren't falling before her eyes. In the Resistance, it seemed different, at least for General Organa and for Kaydel.

"What makes you smile like that?" Kaydel asked behind her. Even on her tiptoes, she was shorter than Rey, and she couldn't see her face in the looking glass. Rey heard her press on the pink bottle before seeing the tip of her fingers put the conditioner over her roots. 

"I was wondering what I'd look like with the same haircut as yours,"

Kaydel chuckled behind her. Very slowly, she massaged the conditioner on Rey's skull, before spreading the thick liquid to the length of her hair.

"You'd probably look very pretty. General Organa would be flattered, she did her hair in the same way when she was your age."

Strangely enough, the idea of looking like a younger general Organa didn't please her all that much. It wouldn't be right, she thought, without being able to clearly explain why.  
Kaydel took her comb again. "To help spread the conditioner over your hair a little more," she explaned as she ran it again through Rey's hair.

Rey closed her eyes. The product smelled nice, the room was still warm thanks to the hot water she had used, and she was being taken care of. It was a one-time thing, only to show her how to do it, but it was very pleasant, the contact of Kaydel's fingers on her skull sending little tingles down her spine. She could heard that Kaydel was humming quietly, so did it mean that it wasn't a complete chore for her? She had to draw some benefit from the whole endeavour, though Rey didn't see what it was yet. Maybe she would have to return the favor? 

Rey imagined herself untying Kaydel's buns, watching the golden locks run down her back. Getting to take them between her fingers, watch the highlights slide along the hair like running water, feeling their softness against her skin - Rey could think of worse things to have to do.

"Application time is up, you just have to rinse now," Kaydel said, letting go of Rey's hair and taking a step back. She leaned sideways until she appeared in the mirror. Her cheeks were the same bright pink that Rey had seen before.

"If you need anything else, don't hesitate to ask again," Kaydel told her before stepping out again.

Rey looked back at her reflection. Her own cheeks felt like they were burning and had reddened as well. Her heart was racing faster in her chest, though she didn't feel scared, angry or stressed at all - quite the opposite, she felt very good, albeit a little light-hearted. Maybe it was just the heat, she thought.

 

"Wanna watch a holo-movie?" Kaydel asked her one evening, a few days after Rey had settled in the Resistance. She had already untied her hair and put on her frilly nightgown, sitting on the edge of her bed.

Rey lifted her head up from her own datapad, reading again the instructions on how to set up the power cell correctly against the harmonic energizer. It was what she had planned to do tomorrow, and even a small mistake could result in the finished weapon exploding into her hands when she would turn it on.

If she wasn't training with Luke Skywalker or doing patrol runs with the X-Wing squadrons, she was working on building her lightsaber. She had enough knowledge from her scavenging days to find in the Resistance the pieces she would need - or suitable substitutes - to build the bulk of it. The mechanics had allowed her a little space in their workshop, somewhere relatively quiet where she worked until she had other obligations to attend to, or she felt too tired to keep her eyes open. At night, she dreamed about it, and it was either pleasant - showing off her work in front of her friends - or stressful - breaking an important piece or accidentally destroying the entire thing.

She should probably keep on reading to save time tomorrow. But she looked at Kaydel and at her smile, her holo-projector resting on her lap. Rey had never watched a holo-movie before; she had heard about them in a study found in an Imperial databank aboard a crashed star destroyer. Something titled Impacts of Imperial holo-movie broadcasting on xenospecies' productivity in occupied Outer Rim Worlds. The text didn't really do a great job of describing what a holo-movie exactly was.

Well, it was time to figure it out.

I turned out that holo-movies were great. For the first fifteen minutes or so, Rey didn't really get it - what was the point of just watching characters do things if you couldn't do anything, tell them where to go? It had left like watching someone use the flight simulator program she had back on Jakku. But she got carried in the flow of the story, and soon she felt deeply involved into the main character's life. The story was set thousands of years ago in the past, at the time of the war between the Old Republic and the Sith. It was focused on a Republic spy who learned she was answering to the orders of an infiltrated Sith, and was now trying to both save her life and expose the truth. It was fun to see someone else get involved in life-of-death situation in the comfort of her quarters.

Watching with someone else was also great. Kaydel reacted very vividly to everything that was happening - laughing at all the jokes, gasping when it looked like the heroine was cornered, cheering on her when she fought back.

The story concluded with the protagonist and her trusted colleagues having to go on the run to avoid being arrested by the Republic.

"So did you like it?" Kaydel asked once the holo-movie was over.

"I loved it!" Rey replied with a big smile.

"I'm glad to hear that! It's one of my favorite series."

"Series? There are more of that?"

"Yes," Kaydel replied. "The story goes on, with five more holo-movies after this one, and there's even a special movie focused on 55-PK before he joined Millia's team!"

Rey remembered her life on Jakku, where every waking hour was spend working to earn the food rations that would keep her going. Her only moments of rest were forced upon her, when the sandstorms blowing over the planet kept her from going outside. She would either train on her flight simulator or, when she was younger, make up stories about herself and Dosmit Raeh, the woman that owned the flight helmet that she had found one day and liked to wear sometimes. In her imagination, they were the best of friends and had plenty of adventures on Jakku. She got tired of playing pretend one day. But here in the Resistance, it was okay to actually watch recording people doing just that in one's free time.

"Perhaps we can watch the next one tomorrow night?" Kaydel suggested.

"I'd like to!" Rey replied. "Can I ask Poe and Finn to watch it with us?"

Finn had opened up a bit to her about his life in the First Order, and she imagined that he couldn't watch the same kind of holo-movies that Kaydel watched. As for Poe, he always seemed to be near Finn when he wasn't flying in his X-Wing or at a meeting. It seemed rude to leave him out.

Kaydel was still smiling, but her lips tensed up a bit.

"Of course, you should ask them tomorrow!" she replied in a higher-pitched voice than usual.

 

Rey raised her head from her workshop when she heard the familiar sound of Finn's crutches against the concrete floor of the hangars.

"Finn, Hi! Is there something you need?" she asked, carefully putting away the skeleton of her future lightsaber.

"Not really, but there's a relatively nice weather up on the surface," he replied, looking up, "the Resistance doesn't seem to need my help today on First Order tactics or locations, and I don't want to spend all my afternoon between four walls studying xenobiology."

Rey looked down at her workshop. It had been going fine, as she already knew quite a bit about dismantling and putting back together various bits of machinery, and Luke Skywalker had taught her how to use the Force to be even more precise in her work. At her current pace, she would assemble all the parts she already got on base before the end of the current week. She and Luke Skywalker had already sent requests to the supply offices for the missing pieces. 

She looked up at Finn, who was watching her expectantly, a bright smile on his face. It was alright for her to take a break from time to time, right? She would probably be even more efficient after letting some steam out.

The sun was already low on the horizon, despite the time on Rey's datapad informing them they were barely into the second half of the afternoon. They waved at the Resistance members that worked and lived on the surface - a mixed group of Elomin and base personnels working on setting up a field to supplement the Resistance's mostly imported food, guards surveying the areas, scouts leaving or coming back to the base on speeders.  
They left the base perimeter by the main entrance between two concrete watchtowers, the guards posted before it reminding them the gates would close in two hours from now.

The ground was hard and frozen beneath their feet, but neither of them minded it, instead enjoying the cool breeze that made the clouds run in the sky. Once in a while, the sun was unveiled, and Rey could briefly feel its faint heat over her skin. The landscape of plains covered in short grass and its horizon blocked by the A'driannamieq Mountains wasn't as beautiful in Rey's mind as Takodana's endless deep green forest and lakes had been. However, it still easily beat Jakku. 

She looked at Finn who had tucked his crutches under his arm to try and walk without their help. He stretched out his other arm for balance, and was taking a few slow steps, brow furrowed in concentration. Rey stopped to watch him expectantly, ready to jump if he was going to fall down. But Finn didn't fall, and the grinned triumphantly after he managed to make twenty steps on his own two legs. And Rey couldn't help but smile back at him.

The exercice had still been hard for Finn, and he carefully sat down on the floor, stretching his legs before him and looking up at the clouds.

"So, how is Jedi training going?" he asked her once she was sitting next to him.

Not that much had changed in their respective situations since Rey had come back to the base - but they simply enjoyed talking and being able to share their feelings with one another. Rey had grown up alone and nobody cared about what she had to say unless it could be a source of profit, such as her accidentally revealing the location of an undiscovered wreckage. From what she had learned about Finn's upbringing, Stormtroopers weren't very big on the whole "share your feelings" concept either. 

Here in the Resistance, it seemed that everyone watched over everyone else, asking how things were going, if they needed help with carrying that heavy piece, or if they'd like to hang out later for a game of pazaak. She could get used to that, to forming bonds not just with Finn, Poe and Kaydel but with everyone else, like a climbing plant that spread over an entire wall with enough sun and water. But Luke Skywalker didn't seem to like it, she thought, as she caught him glaring at her while she was laughing loudly with her friends and her fellow pilots at a stupid joke Poe had made. She guessed he saw it as a flaw in her armor, a way for the enemy to weaken her, or worse, to turn her into an ally of the darkside. Rey saw it a strenght, but who was she to retort that to Luke Skywalker who had extensively studied the history of the Jedi Order for the bigger part of his life? She shrugged that thought off internally - if he wasn't saying anything, she had no reason to stop.

"By the way," Rey asked when they tackled the subject of how she was integrating herself in the Resistance, "Are you doing anything this evening? We're watching a holo-movie with Kaydel and I was thinking that you and Poe could come too!"

Finn's smile tensed up. "Sorry, but I had other plans for the evening. Poe and I are… going camping," he explained, his voice dropping lower on his last two words.

Rey shot him a surprised look. The temperature on Elom were cold during the day and bone-chilling during the night. Around them, the barren plains stretched for miles and miles, with only the occasional farm or hamlet. Rey was pretty sure the Resistance base was the only point of interest in the area. Going on a camping trip on Elom sounded to her like something awfully boring, but she wasn't one to judge.

"Maybe some other time?" she suggested, trying to hide the disappointment in her voice. She hadn't actually seen Finn all that much between her Force lessons, trying out the starfighters, lending a hand to the mechanics and working on her lightsaber. It had been nice to walk out of the base and spend some time together, but Rey felt as if it wasn't enough.

"Sure," Finn replied. He took his own datapad out of the satchel he was always carrying with himself and checked the time. "Speaking about Poe, I should get going if we don't want to get blocked by the gates closing," he explained, taking leverage on his crutch to stand up. "Time flies when you're having a good time with a friend," he added with a smile. Rey stood up in turn and helped him stand upright, holding out his other crutch for him.

Back at the underground base's entrance, they spotted Poe hauling material on a speeder bike.

"There you are!" he exclaimed when he saw Finn, turning away from the bike and jogging towards them. BB-8 was on his heels, beeping their greetings.

His hands framed Finn's face and he leaned on, kissing Finn on the lips.

Rey gasped out of surprise. Yet it was shedding a new light on some things she had already witnessed - Poe letting his hand rest on Finn's back, picking out food from each other's tray at the mess hall, them bunking together… She remembered the crude conversations and jokes she used to hear around the waterhole at Niima Outpost, and heat crept up her cheeks, and it was just plain odd to see that it was what Poe and Finn were up to. And would probably be up to for the better part of night. So that was why he hadn't told her before about the trip.

"Rey, you look like you have seen a desert spirit," Poe laughed as he and Finn were entertwining their fingers. Anyone else and Rey would have found that adorable, and yet she felt as if she had just eaten an expired ration.

"It's nothing," she lied, forcing herself to smile and stare straight into Finn's eyes, because she was not going to make him worried about her when he was about to go camping with his boyfriend. Still, she was pretty sure she had let something slip up, because Finn's smile faded a little over his face.

BB-8 rolled over to her, nudging themselves against her leg. It provided the perfect distraction, and she crouched down to rub a hand over the droid's head.

"I guess I have to watch you over until they come back?" she asked, taking on a cheerful tone.

"You don't have to, Rey-"  
"It's fine, me and BB didn't have the chance to talk to each other a lot yet since I came back," Rey added, briefly glancing at Poe before focusing back on BB-8's photosensor.

BB-8 beeped cheerfully, spinning their head in agreement.

She forced herself to regain some composure before facing Finn and Poe again.

"So, um, have fun?" Rey guessed it was the most appropriate thing to say in such circumstances. "You should get going," she added quickly, struck with inspiration. "Or the door is going to close and you're going to be stuck there!"

She wrapped her arms around her torso, even though she didn't feel cold at all. "Alright, me and BB-8 are going to head back inside, it's freezing out there! So, see you tomorrow?"

Poe nodded, his lips pinched and eyebrows slightly frowned. "Sure, see you tomorrow,"

"See you tomorrow, Rey!" Finn said in turn, smiling awkwardly.

A silence floated between them, before Rey turned around and walked with a firm step towards the base's entrance. Behind her, she heard the engine of the speeder come to life and then the distinct sound of the vehicule starting and hovering away from the base at high speed. Only when the sound became muffled enough by the distance she dared to look behind her, spotting a lone black dot over the horizon. Her stomach twisted and turned, and she almost ran to grab another bike and follow them - and then what? What would she do and say?

 

"Hello, BB-8!" Kaydel told the astromech as she stepped into their quarters.

Rey lifted her head from her datapad. "Evening," she mumbled, not even trying not to sound upset. Kaydel would have been able to tell that Rey wasn't feeling fine, even if Rey had tried to put on a joyful tone. Kaydel was able to know someone was withdrawing information or lying about something just by the sound of their voice. Professional quirk, by Kaydel's own admission. When one's job was to talk and listen to people every day, it was something you kind of picked up, she had explained to her once, during one of their commlink conversations on Ahch-To.

Without a word, Rey wriggled from her lying position on her cot until there was enough room on the edge of the bed for Kaydel to sit on.

"I take it Poe and Finn aren't coming tonight?" she asked rhetorically, her gaze on Poe's astromech.

"They've gone camping," Rey answered bitterly, insisting on that last word.

"Oh," Kaydel simply answered. "You didn't know?" 

"That they like to go camping together? No, I didn't. They didn't tell me."

Rey heard a low chuckle that made her frown. She lifted her head up to get a better look at Kaydel's face.

"To be fair, they never had to tell anyone before. It was.. everyone just kind of knew when they decided they wanted to be a relationship. You just had to look at them," Kaydel told her with sparkles in her eyes and a smile on her lips.

Rey let her head fall back on her pillow. "Sorry for being dense, I guess," she mumbled. A part of herself was surprised at how upset the situation made her; the other just wanted to let her frustration out.

"Don't take it like that."

Kaydel reached out to cover Rey's hand with her own. The contact of Kaydel's warm skin over her own made her jump. 

Rey closed her eyes, breathing out. "Sorry, that was rude. I'm being rude."

"All is forgiven, Rey."

There was a silence, and then Kaydel spoke up again. "Did you wish that Finn went camping with you instead?" There was something in her tone that startled Rey, though she couldn't quite figure out why it was. She silently wished she had Kaydel's gift to decipher the nuances in one's voice.

"No, I don't think so," she replied. She had wondered about that earlier. She had put herself in Poe's place, imagining herself framing Finn's face with her hand as he did and placing her mouth against his own. It wasn't something she desired to do, she had found out.

"It's more… Like there was suddenly a wall between me and them. Or, there had always been a wall since I came back but I only saw it now, because I'm apparently terrible at picking up things like that," Rey explained. She felt her throat swell up, and she took in a ragged breath. "One minute things were, like they were before, and the next minute it all looks different."

Rey rolled to her side, facing the wall away from Kaydel. "I just feel lonely, I guess."

Rey had hoped these feelings would be gone for good. She had let go of the idea that her parents would ever come back for her, she had found a place she could call home here at the Resistance. She had been reunited with Finn and made new friends, she was integrating herself into the Resistance, she had figured out that her fate would be to become a Jedi. Yet, she felt as if she was back on Jakku, alone inside the wreckage of the AT-AT, with her makeshift doll for sole company.

"People in love make you feel like that, yes," Kaydel said quietly. "You're not alone in thinking that it sucks."

"I don't want to be like that. I want to be happy for Finn because he deserves it," Rey protested. Her hand clutched her sheets, twisting the fabric. Finn, so afraid of the First Order, and yet who had come back for her and took a lightsaber wound through his back to protect her. It was so selfish to ask for more, to feel frustrated and jealous because he had found happiness elsewhere.

"It goes away after a while. If you are yourself in a relationship, it puts things in perspective, too."

Rey chuckled sadly, rolling on her back and staring at the ceiling. "Too bad the Jedi Code forbids romantic relationships," she said bitterly.

From the corner of her eyes, Rey was pretty sure she saw Kaydel's shoulders briefly tense up.

"What about your time on Jakku?"

Rey grimaced. "Everyone cared for themselves first on Jakku. But I had a few suitors, I guess. People somehow needing my help to carry such and such piece of machinery from their own shack to the outpost. Complete with empathic winks," she explained. Rey winked at Kaydel in the same way she had seen some of the scavengers doing it, and Kaydel burst into laughter.

"No wonder you weren't interested!"

"Yeah," Rey admitted. "And anyway… On Jakku, it was much more trouble that it would have been worth. There was the mocking gossip at the waterhole, the tales of people waking up to their precious findings being stolen, the very public arguments about sharing the earned water and food rations… Even without all of that, what would have been the point? My parents would come for me, one day. No use in becoming close to anyone."

"Indeed, the dating scene on Jakku sounds pretty awful," Kaydel conceded with a smile. She sighed, shrugging her shoulders. "It's definitely nicer here, I think. We all look out for each other. So, if an alteration to the Jedi Code is in the works, and you find someone you like… It might be nice."

Rey shook her head. "I don't think Master Luke would let me get involved like that," she replied with a grimace. "I don't need it, anyway." So far, she had been nothing but happy living at the Resistance base, getting to meet her future comrade-in-arms, helping out the mechanics and hanging out with her friends in her free time.

She sat up in her bed, placing her hands over her thighs, and looking into Kaydel's eyes. "I'm fine. I've got friends I care about, and I know what I have to do. And if I feel bad, I can always talk to you, so I have no reason to be sad. So, thank you very much for that!"

Kaydel's face lightened up, her cheeks turning bright pink. "It's nothing, really."

"It's not."

Rey reached out to take Kaydel's hands into hers. "It's not. It means a lot to me. When I had just arrived at the base, not knowing anyone, you have been so kind to me. And you still are. I owe you a lot, Kaydel. You're the best bunkmate I could wish for!"

Kaydel was blushing hard, and she looked down from Rey's face to stare at their hands on Rey's thighs. "Well, the feeling's mutual," she blurted out, her usual articulacy gone. Nonetheless, Rey was glad to hear it, Kaydel's words making her heart flutter in her chest. She felt so happy, the image of Finn quite literally riding away from her seemed like a distant memory.

"So, best bunkmate, are we still watching the Crimson Revenge sequel tonight or not? I start my shift early tomorrow, and Major Ematt will reprimand me if I sleep on the job!" Kaydel joked.

They figured that since Poe and Finn had left them with the task of watching over BB-8, it was only fair game if they used the droid's holo-projector instead of Kaydel's portable one.

"Wow," Rey exclaimed when Kaydel turned off the lights and the room went dark save for the 3D image projected by the little droid. She had a little hint of the droid's holo-projector's quality when they had completed the map to Luke Skywalker, but this looked much better with the lights off.

"I know, right?" Kaydel replied joyfully. She grabbed the pillow on her own bed and sat next to Rey, putting the pillow behind her back and leaning back on it. Rey leaned back, too, until she was half-sitting, half-lying down. Kaydel folded her legs underneath her, before asking BB-8 to start the projection. The sound was also much clearer than out of Kaydel's player's speakers. Rey briefly thought that Poe might have modified BB-8's equipment for a prime holo-movie watching experience. The image of Poe and Finn cuddling with each other on their bed, watching a movie together sparked in her mind. She shook her head, trying to forget it.

"What's wrong?" Kaydel asked quietly.

"Nothing," Rey lied. She stared into Kaydel's eyes, and shifted from her position until their thighs were touching. She liked feeling the heat of her friend's body against her own, and from the smile that blossomed on Kaydel's lips, she seemed to think the same about Rey.

That was nice, Rey thought. Luke Skywalker would have probably glared at them both if he was there, but he wasn't there- and Rey needed that here and now, the comforting presence of her friend against her.

Kaydel placed her hand on Rey's back. The contact sent a shiver running down Rey's spine, but it was far from unpleasant.

Her friend didn't remove her hand until the movie was over.


	4. Ilum

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey, Luke Skywalker and Chewbacca go to Ilum, to find a kyber crystal for Rey's lightsaber.

The hours spent on her flight simulator turned out to be almost useless when she got into the cockpit of an A-wing for the first time. Among the smallest starfighters in the Resistance's fleet, they were built for raw speed and maniability. 

"Even the newest TIE-fighters used by the First Order would get outrun by a Rebellion-era A-wing with a skilled pilot on board," Poe explained to her over the commlink. 

But she needed to become a skilled A-wing pilot first, she thought, clutching the flight stick. At moderate speed, it was easy enough to turn, but once she unleashed the raw power of the starfighter's engines, too strong of a push in one direction or in the other sent her wildly off-course. She watched with envy as Poe Dameron flew right above her and drew a large curve up in the sky, the A-wing becoming as small as a bug after a few seconds.

The communication system beeped, the navigational computer informing her that the call was coming for the base.

"HQ to Green Leader, Green One," Kaydel began in a neutral, professional voice. "I've got a message from Luke Skywalker to Rey,"

"Hi, Kaydel!" Rey replied cheerfully over the commlink. "What is it?"

"Our supply team is back with the pieces you both ordered," she explained. "Luke Skywalker wants to see you as quickly as possible."

Rey's heartbeat quickened from anticipation. Save from the crystal, it was the last pieces she needed to finish the lightsaber. 

"Green Leader to HQ- Roger that, coming back home immediately," Poe Dameron announced. Rey watched Poe's A-wing reappeared in the white sky before her, and flew past her above the plains back towards base.

Rey wasn't exactly feeling happy. She was excited to finish the weapon she had built herself, as she always felt whenever she had managed to fix something before, when she lived on Jakku. At the same time, she was anxious to know what would be her next trial. Would that mean she was finally ready to fight Kylo Ren again? 

She jumped from the cockpit, removed her gloves and flight helmet, and went straight to the elevator. After a detour by her quarters to grab the unfinished weapon she went down to the lowest levels of the base.

Luke Skywalker had settled himself in a large storage room at the very bottom of the mining well. The room was filled to the brim with the artefacts collected from the Jedi temple. Luke Skywalker's actual living space occupied a very small part of the room.

The Jedi was waiting for Rey, standing before his workbench, arms crossed. He nodded briefly at her as she stepped in.

"How did your flying lesson go?"

"Fine, I believe. A-wings are not the easiest ships to tame," she replied, and a small smile appeared on Luke's lips. Rey relaxed a little.

"Are we going to finish my lightsaber today?" she asked, not being able to reign in the excitation in her voice.

To her disappointment, Luke shook his head. "There is one piece missing. And before that, I need to see how well you've handled building your saber so far."

The minutes Rey spent watching Luke examine her work up to the smallest details were among the longest of her life. She understood the importance of it - the instruction manual stressed that the slightest malfunction could damage the weapon and harm its user.

Luke Skywalker cleared his throat. "Good job, Rey." Still, he opened the handle, grabbed a pair of pliers lying on the workbench, and twisted some of the parts inside, readjusting their position with each other. He closed the handle, and handed it to Rey.

"We're not finishing it?"

Luke Skywalker shook his head again. "The last pieces need to be put on along with the kyber crystal. Crystal that we're going to bring back from Ilum."

"When are we going?"

Luke Skywalker smiled. "First hour tomorrow, Rey. Time to pack your things."

 

Rey was fine. She should feel fine, because as Poe and Kaydel explained to her, Ilum was a sacred place and being allowed to go there was a great honor.

Rey had read in the Jedi archives that a trip there used to be an important step in the life of a Jedi apprentice. A rite of passage of some sort.

"I don't think you are fine," Kaydel said to her from the refresher, as she was brushing her long golden hair. She had left the door open so they could carry on a conversation while Rey was packing her clothes.

Rey grumbled. Right now, she wasn't very thankful to have for bunkmate someone that seemed to see right through her despite her best efforts to keep things for herself. What was she supposed to say, anyway? That after all the time and effort she had poured into learning the way of the Force, she was having cold feet? What would everyone think if she showed up to General Organa's office and told her she wasn't sure about the whole pledge-your-life-to-serve-the-Force business anymore?

"I'm going to miss you," she finally replied, and while it wasn't the exact truth of what was going inside her head, it wasn't a complete lie. She regretted it as soon as she said them, because she was probably only going to be gone for a dozen days or so. Rey had spent the better part of her life alone on Jakku, her interactions limited to trading with Unkar Plutt and sometimes talking with fellow scavengers. So, this shouldn't be that big of a deal, right?

"I'm going to miss you too," Kaydel replied, stepping out of the refresher. She had put on her nightgown already. She stopped mere inches away from Rey. "It's going to feel lonely in there while you're gone," Kaydel continued with a sad smile.

She took Rey's hand inside her own. Rey started at the unusual gesture, but once the surprise was gone, she realized she didn't want to let go. It was nice, actually, to be able to hold someone else's hand. She tore her gaze away from their intertwined fingers to look at Kaydel's face. She was smiling, but there was a sadness in her eyes that tugged at Rey's heartstrings.

Rey decided that she hated that look on her friend's face.

"What's wrong?" she whispered, tightening her fingers' grip around Kaydel's.

"Nothing's wrong," Kaydel replied, lowering her gaze, and Rey didn't need to be Force-sensitive to know she was lying.

Rey let go of Kaydel's hands and pulled her into an embrace. She heard Kaydel gasp briefly as Rey wrapped her arms around her back. Her friend stood still, frozen-like for a few seconds, and Rey wondered briefly if she hadn't just done a terrible mistake.

Slowly, Kaydel lowered her arms trapped between their bodies, and wrapped them around Rey's waist.

The sensation of Kaydel's body fully pressed against her own, felt incredibly right. Rey's senses were overwhelmed, between the sound of Kaydel breathing, to the sweet, flowery scents of Kaydel's body soap and shampoo, Kaydel's breath brushing against her skin above the collar of her shirt, the weight of Kaydel's breasts being pressed against her chest, the warmth of her body she felt underneath the soft fabric Rey was now clutching tightly.

Rey's mouth and throat were dry, her heart beating hard in her chest, her breath turning shallow. And yet, for nothing in the world she would have let her go of Kaydel, because she couldn't ever remember having felt so happy as she was feeling right now. It was as if her brain had blocked everything but the situation here and there, and how good it was to hold Kaydel and to let herself be held by her. 

 

Very slowly, Kaydel removed her arms from around Rey's waist, and took a step back. Rey was suddenly even more aware of how tight they had clung to each other as the pressure of Kaydel's frame against her own disappeared.

Kaydel was right there, in front of her, a smile on her face, and she didn't seem sad anymore. So, problem solved, right? So why did Rey feel so sad and lonely, all of a sudden?

"We should finish to pack your things before going to sleep," Kaydel suggested, looking behind Rey to glance at the still half-empty traveling bag. She sounded like she was trying her best to take on a cool, neutral tone, but her voice was slightly shaky. She zeroed on the pile of clothes Rey had put on the bed, starting to fold them.

Rey wanted to say something, ask her if Kaydel had felt it too - the feeling of bliss as they stood in each other's arms, and then that hollow sensation as they pulled apart. But her words died in her throat as she saw how tense Kaydel suddenly looked.

"Sure," Rey simply replied. Kaydel briefly turned her head, giving her a reassuring, I'm-fine-don't-worry smile. Rey was sure she was lying, again. She sighed, giving up. She had wanted to comfort her friend, hug the sadness she had seen away - but it seemed like it had just made things worse.

 

Rey sank into the comfortable pilot's chair, wrapping her arms around her knees. She watched the blue-white lights flashing around the Falcon's cockpit as the ship flew through hyperspace. A quick look at the board computer informed her that she was still three hours away from reaching their planned destination.

She had just relieved Chewbacca from his watch - she couldn't get any sleep anyway, so she might as well do something useful if she was going to stay awake all night.

Rey had felt restless ever since she had stepped again inside the Millennium Falcon. Nothing, be it Chewbacca's quiet, reassuring presence, or the low hum of the Falcon's engines, seemed to be able to soothe her. She would fall asleep very late or not at all, and wake up feeling like she had just been able to fall into inconsciousness a few minutes ago.

Once it would be time for them to take the trip back to the Resistance, she would have to become a different person, she thought. Someone like Luke Skywalker, who kept himself at a safe distance from everyone else, who never wanted to share his feelings from everyone. Even with his own sister - and she had seen it with her own eyes, the brief, tense hug they had given to each other before they left for Ilum.

Rey used to wonder if she had siblings, if they lived with her parents or if they had to be left behind like her, in another planet perhaps, and if she would get to meet them once her parents would come back for her. She imagined that she would love them and that they would love her too - they would have plenty of adventures and always have each other's back.

It was more than likely that she would never know. In a sense, she had been able to grieve the life she never had, because she had found people to replace them - and they were all eargerly waiting for her return back on Elom.

She turned towards the cockpit's entrance, hearing the shuffling of fabric against the cold metallic floor. She stared up at Luke Skywalker.

The Jedi sat down on the co-pilot's seat. He remained silent for a few minutes, staring outside the cockpit.

"We need to talk," he finally said, and his cold blue eyes stared directly into her own.

Rey swallowed, tightening her grip against her knees.

"You've made close friends among the people in the Resistance."

Rey closed her eyes. She knew where this was going.

"But it's important, as a Jedi, to be able to distance yourself from the ones you love," he continued.

Rey pinched her lips. It was like being face to face with Maz Kanata again, as she heard her spelling out the truth she had always knew but had refused to face, until the circumstances had driven her away from Jakku.

She had to stop being Rey the scavenger that day.

And now, she needed to stop being Finn's friend, Poe's friend, and Kaydel's friend. She had to shed all of that away, so her connection to the Force would be absolute, so she could stop the Dark Side for using her loved ones against her.

Deep inside her mind, she wanted to fight, because it was unfair - like how unfair it had been that her parents left her on her own on Jakku to never come back. She also knew that Luke Skywalker was right. The last time Rey had put her feelings before everything else, she ended up running deep into a forest, only to get herself captured by the First Order. She would still be their prisoner had not Han Solo, Chewbacca and Finn come to her rescue. By trying to protect her, Finn had almost died.

She let out a long, shaky breath, trying to rein in the tears that threatened to escape her eyes. She focused on the lull of the Falcon's engines, on the feel of her trousers' fabric underneath her fingers. She grounded herself into the present, increasing her senses' awareness of the immediate environment. 

When she opened her eyes again, she felt strangely empty, her worries dulled, sounding an echo coming from very far away. She easily felt the Force around and inside herself, still like the surface of a lake.  
"I know," she simply replied in a cool, neutral voice. "And I will."

 

Once they landed on Ilum, right next to a half-demolished gate as tall as the ice cliffs surrounding it, Rey sensed death through the Force, like a thousand needles sinking inside her very soul. She stood still on the ramp of the Millennium Falcon, shielding herself from the assault on her mind. Even Chewbacca seemed to sense it to some degree, as he emitted a worried groan.

The sense of dread had been so powerful she hadn't immediately felt how cold the weather was - much, much colder than on Elom. Wind blew through her hair, carrying thick snowflakes with it.

"What happened there?" Rey asked Luke Skywalker while pulling her hood over her head.

"Have you ever heard about Order 66?" he asked her in turn, heading towards the gate.

"I don't think so."

"No wonder - the Empire has tried to erase any mention of it after Darth Sidious' rise to power."

They stopped in front of a series of small snow rises. Luke Skywalker crouched down in front of them, pushing the snow away, and revealing a carved rectangular grey stone. Rey gasped, realizing they were standing in front of a tombstone.

"Were these… Jedi?" Rey asked again.

Luke Skywalker shook his head. "Order 66 was a secret order sent to the Clone Troopers that fought alongside the Jedi in the Clone Wars. The objective was to completely eliminate the Jedi Order, and anyone affiliated with it. This included the apprentices, such as the ones that were killed there as they readied themselves up to gather their crystals."

Rey's heart sank into her chest. These apprentices - she had read about their lives. They must have all been between eight and twelve years old, according to the Jedi Order archives Luke Skywalker had given her to read. They had been killed by what would become the Empire. These were the kind of people the First Order looked up to. This was the kind of action their enemies would do again without hesitation. She felt rage boiling inside her, but she crossed Luke Skywalker's gaze, and she forced herself to cool down.

"Let's get in and find my crystal," she declared.

 

The Jedi Temple must have been beautiful, once. They were welcomed by a tall statue of a lightsaber-wielding Jedi, its twin lying in pieces all over the floor. The walls were cracked and large parts of them were missing, revealing the rough stone underneath. The parts that stood still were, however, finely decorated, as a testimony of the wealth and power of the Jedi Order of old. At the center of the room laid a colossal, fractured transparent crystal. Rey briefly thought it was a kyber crystal, only to figure out once she was close enough that it was simply glass.

"It was part of a system allowing the sun's rays to concentrate over there," Luke explained, first pointing to the ceiling right above the glass beacon, and then pointing to the top of a tall, thick ice wall.

"During the days of the old Jedi Order, the apprentices could only enter in the morning, when the sun hit the top of ice wall, making it melt. But the sun will only rise again in five days according to my calculations, so we're going to use a more direct approach."

Even with two lightsabers, the ice wall was so thick it took them a hour and a half to carve out an opening. In the meantime, Chewbacca had set up a fire next to them (so all that liquid fuel hadn't been brought on board for some outdoor cooking, Rey had realized) to keep the ice wall from forming again.

Behind the ice, there was another room with a few columns. Around the corner was where the cave truly started.

Rey took a deep breath.

"I'll be waiting out there, and you can call me if there's any trouble," Luke Skywalker explained, holding out his commlink receptor in his hand. "But you're the only one who can find your own crystal."

"Got it." She turned on her torchight, pointing it towards the depth of the cave. "So, see you later, I guess?"

 

Rey liked to believe that she had a firm grip on the Force that dwelled inside and around herself, but even that wasn't enough to localize or even get clues as to where she could find her crystal. The archives described the process as your crystal finding you as much as one would find their crystal.

So far, said crystal hadn't made itself known, and Rey decided to pick directions at random as she delved deeper into the cave. It was easy to lose the sense of time underground, and she would feel like she had walked for hours before checking her datapad and realise it had only been forty minutes since she stepped inside.

 

Before she wanted to head for the hallway on her left at the next intersection, she felt a cold breeze brush over her bare hands, coming from her right.

The wind was coming out of a narrow tunnel. She flashed her torchlight. No crystals on the walls, but the path was going down. It probably led outside, and Rey wondered if she wasn't supposed to stay inside at all costs. On the other hand, the breeze might be one of the hints that she had been looking for.

Rey crawled down the tunnel for she didn't know how long. She predictably ended up outside, her hands sinking into the snow. She stood up, the snow stopping right under her knees.  
She lifted her hear; the weather was clear, the silver moon basking her and her surroundings in a white light. Rey had ended up at the feet of the cliff, on the other side from the Jedi Temple's entrance. Away from the cave, a pine forest spread, slender black shapes that seemingly stretched themselves to reach the sky.

She took a step towards the forest, and her leg collided with something cold and heavy. She looked down, expecting a stone.

Instead, there was a body, half-covered by snow.

She crouched down, wiping the snow away. Her fingers brushed against something awfully familiar. Leather fabric.

Finn.

She pushed the body on their back, hoping this wasn't true, that she was imagining things.

She screamed when she saw the face of his friend, eyes closed, skin as cold as the snow surrounding us. Her fingers searched for a pulse, and found none.

"No, no, no, Finn, that's not you, that can't be you," she cried. Finn was millions of light-years away, at the Resistance base, safe and sound - and yet he was lying lifeless before her. Did he decide to follow her because he was worried about her? What had happened?

She lifted her head, and noticed that the snow field was littered with snow-covered bodies. Her whole body was shaking as she stood up, and took hesitant steps towards the closest next to Finn.

Long golden hair had spread about Kaydel's inert face. Her skin was pale and frozen under her touch.

"Kaydel, Kaydel," she whispered, tears running freely on her face. Rey was suffocating, every breathe she took burning her lungs. She found herself unable to speak, unable to think, the pain and the loss engulfing her own mind. She mindlessly ran to the other bodies, her heart breaking again and again as she recognized each and every face.  
Chewbacca, Luke Skywalker, General Organa, Poe Dameron.

The pilots she had met, so eager to fly with her after they heard again and again the story of how she and Finn escaped from a TIE-fighter squadron.

The mechanics she would give a hand whenever they needed help at the repair workshop while she was building her lightsaber.

General Organa's staff, that believed in her and in her power, that hoped she would be the key to their victory against the First Order.

She kneeled into the snow, the pressure in her chest unbearable. She didn't understand why or how, but she had failed them all, the only family she had ever known had been ripped away from her.

She might as well die here, she thought. She could already feel the cold insidiously taking hold of her body. There are more unpleasant ways to die, she thought.

Something moving in her periphery caught her eyes and she forced herself to turn her head. Two figures in black faced each other, the cold breeze that guided her there blowing through their hair.  
The tallest one was Kylo Ren, and the rage she felt upon seeing his face set her blood on fire.  
The other one was herself.

The other Rey turned her head to look at her in her eyes. She looked utterly helpless, tears in her eyes. Her fingers were twitching against the handle of Luke's lit lightsaber. The other Rey looked up at Kylo Ren. The red light of his own weapon was reflected in the snow. They both were ready to fight, yet they remained perfectly still as they stared at each other.

Rey felt in inside her soul, the same way she had felt it when Kylo Ren had made his choice, on Starkiller Base, when he faced his father.

The other Rey's shoulders sagged, and she turned off her lightsaber. Kylo Ren lifted his own saber, and struck down her double in a swift motion.

Rey felt the searing pain as if she had been the one that had been hit. Her yell echoed through the snow field, against the tall cliffs and among the trees. Against all odds, it had awoken some kind of survival instinct inside her, and she got up, running towards the forest, pushing her legs as hard as she could to pull them out of the snow. Her throat, her lungs were on fire as she forced herself to take deep inspirations. She didn't care where she was going. All she wanted was to flee.

Her feet hit something - a stone, a tree root - and she tripped, but instead of landing in the snow, all she could see before her was darkness. She tried to grasp tree branches, but there was only the void before and underneath her.  
She reflexively reached out her hands before her, as if it would be enough to break her fall.  
Instead of landing on cold, hard floor, she sunk deep into cold water.

Rey flailed her arms and legs, kicking the water around her to get up to the surface. Each move seemed to drag her down towars the bottom. Her clothes felt heavy against her legs, the weight draining her energy.

"I know it's easier said than done, but if you ever fall into water, the first step is not to panic and stay still."

Kaydel's voice resonated in her head as clearly as she had been at her side. It was a memory from one of their conversations while Rey was training on Ahch-To. She had told her about her fear of falling into water after a particularly upsetting nightmare.

Rey closed her eyes and her mouth, focusing on herself, trying to go past the sound of blood surging to her ears. Stay still. Don't panic.

"Your body will go up in the water, once you reach the surface, try to lie flat on your back."

Rey stopped struggling, feeling the water around her push her towards the surface. She felt cool air brush over her skin, and she opened her eyes.

Before her, she saw the blinding ray of her flashlight. She stretched her arm to catch it, and that's when she noticed she was lying on her belly, her cheek brushing the cold stone floor of the cave. She carefully placed her hand over her hair.

They were completely dry.

Rey started, getting on her knees and looking around her. Before her, the tunnel she had crawled down before - before she arrived at the snow field. She gasped, looking around her. There was only the curved walls of the cave, similar to the other rooms she had explored before. She stood up, trying to find another exit that would lead her outside. Nothing.

Her fingers were shaking when she pulled out her commlink.

"Hello? Luke? Chewbacca?" she called in a faint voice. 

There was a few cracks on the line, and then : "Rey? Are you alright? Is there something wrong?" She heard the distinct growls of the Wookie.

She didn't think she would ever feel relieved to hear her master's voice.

"Yes, I am okay, I just… I will explain it to you when I get back."

"Did you find your crystal? Is that why you are calling?"

"I…" she began. She had completely forgotten about it. She was still reeling from what she had seen - the dead bodies, seeing herself give up and die, falling down the cliff into the water. Rey was starting to feel sick into her stomach, and she was aching for some fresh air.

"I'm going back," she replied, and turned off her commlink. She let herself drop to her knees. Rey had no desire to keep on exploring the cave. She put her hands on her face, wondering if she even wanted to keep on being a Jedi, her doubts coming back to the front. What she saw, was it her future? Her friends dying while she let herself be killed by her enemy?  
Or was it some kind of trial she had utterly failed, her grief overcoming her, making her defenseless against Kylo Ren?

She looked up at the ceiling. Maybe that was what she was supposed to find in that cave - the realization that she couldn't be a Jedi.

Rey noticed a white crystal peeking out of a stalactite a few inches for her face, and she laughed bitterly. She lifted her hand, took it between her thumb and index. She pulled the crystal out of the stone with the lightest amount of strenght. As if it was waiting for her. 

Her crystal probably hadn't been made aware of her moral dilemna, she thought bitterly.

She carefully placed the crystal inside a pocket on her belt, anyway. Rey never came back from an exploration empty-handed.

 

Luke Skywalker and Chewbacca stood up from around the fire that kept the ice wall open to welcome her.

The Jedi gave her an interrogating look. Silently, Rey produced the small crystal out of her belt, and handed it out to him.

Luke Skywalker crossed his arms over his chest. "This is your crystal."

"It's not." Rey shook her head. "I'm not going to be a Jedi."

"Rey!" Luke Skywalker exclaimed. Chewbacca growled his surprise.

"I had a vision inside the cave. You," she said, looking at them both, "General Organa, Poe Dameron, Finn, Kaydel, and everyone else on the base were dead. I saw myself facing Kylo Ren and I didn't even try to defend myself. I had lost all hope."

Rey felt her throat tighten in her chest, and teardrops pearling in her eyes. She had repeated in her head what she was going to say, and expected herself to expose her thoughts as calmly as possible. All of this was currently going down the drain, as the vivid image of her friends lying on the snow flashed before her eyes.

"I can't control myself. I can't not care about them. If I do all of this - it's not because I feel like it's my duty to defeat Kylo Ren. It's because Kylo Ren is out to get the people I care about. If I lose them, I won't be able to go on. I think this was what the Force tried to show me."

She lowered her head, watching as her tears rolled down her chin and fell to the floor. "And that's what he will do. Hurt my friends so he can weaken me. I can't be the champion of the Force or whatever it is that General Organa and you want me to be. Sure, I will fight with the Resistance. But the Jedi Way? I just can't do it. You're going to need someone else."

Luke Skywalker put his hand on her shoulder.

"Rey," he began, staring into her eyes. She could feel how in touch with the Force he was, and it was kind of frightening. But his blue eyes turned soft, much to her surprise.

"You brought a crystal back from the cave. You've passed the test."

With his other hand, he closed Rey's hand over the crystal.

"I've spent a big part of my life studying the way of the Jedi of old. The Force is strong there, and guides the Jedi apprentices in ways that aren't straightforward. There was a crystal that was destined to become yours there, and the Force led you to it. You might choose not to follow the tenets of the Jedi Order. I can't force you to. I don't know what your destiny will be; but I know you will have your part to play in the struggle between the Light and the Dark, the Resistance and the First Order. The Force wills it."

He removed his hand from Rey's shoulder. "I used to believe each and every word of the Jedi Code. I thought that if my father had turned to the Dark Side and became the Emperor's right hand, it was because he hadn't followed the rules. It was only after… what happened to Kylo Ren that I realized that the Code wasn't as infallible as I thought it was. That there might have been other ways for him. And other ways for you, too."

"I watched your progress as I taught you what I knew about the Force. It was as you told me - you fought for your friends. You drew your strenght for the bonds you formed with them. It was what kept you going. It was what kept me going, too, a long time ago. I seem to have forgotten that. I don't know if you can become a Jedi, Rey, but you've learned the right to build your own weapon that you will wield with help from the Force. Make good use of it."


	5. Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey has a short talk with the General Organa, and a longer one with Kaydel.

Rey launched the hyperdrive exit sequence and leaned back on her seat. Her hand searched instinctively for the lightsaber - her lightsaber, the one she built, she reminded herself. Rey ran her fingers to the lenght of the metallic handle. She knew its shape by heart, after longs hours spent over her workbench. If she focused herself, she could also sense the kyber crystal lodged inside, that had turned the hollow shell of power cells and wires into her new weapon. 

Rey succeeded, Luke had sent to General Organa before they took off from Ilum. Rey had felt her stomach turn on itself; his words had sounded like a lie to her ears. And yet, she took the crystal to her makeshift workshop they had set up on the back of the Falcon's cockpit. After a few hours adjusting the pieces to the crystal's shape, everything clicked into place, and she closed off the handle for the last time with shaking fingers.

She lit up the weapon, beams of yellow light coming out from both extremities of the handle. She gasped, her mind attuning itself to the crystal charging itself up in energy and then releasing it in the shape of the twin laser blades. She carefully spun the handle, the blades whooshing weightlessly through the air. Past the initial surprise, she focused herself again, reaching that state of mind where she could almost see the Force around her. She practiced some moves, letting the Force guide her, and it was as if she had had that weapon all her life.

Luke Skywalker had nodded approvingly. Rey turned the weapon off, holding the saber's handle tightly. The knot in her belly untied itself slowly, and she felt like she could breathe normally again ever since leaving the crystal cave. That was right, it was right for her to use her weapon, because she could use the Force, and it was the weapon of a Force-user, however they wished to call themselves. Make good use of it, Luke had told her. 

She would, she promised herself.

 

The Falcon entered the Elom system, and a few seconds later, Rey received a communication from the Resistance Base.

"HQ to Millennium Falcon," Kaydel's voice resonated in the cockpit. There was a warmth in her voice, an impatience too, and Rey's heart heavied in her chest.

"Mi-Millennium Falcon to HQ," Rey answered in a hurry, "asking for authorization to land,"

"HQ to Millennium Falcon, authorization granted, please direct yourselves to landing area Aure-Two. Welcome back home, Rey."

The words made her heart beat louder in her chest. She was eager so see her again, alive and breathing, as she was to see everyone else. She wanted to wash away the terrible things she had witnessed while she explored the cave. Beyond that, she had also heard her voice, when she had believed she was drowning. Despite the extensive knowledge on Force-related phenomenoms recorded in the Jedi Order archives, the subject of Force visions was still ill-defined. The most common theory were that they reflected what was deep inside a Jedi's mind - fears and desires. Had she wished for Kaydel to save her? Rey went back in time to the first time she met her. She might not have have saved her in the way Finn saved her when she had been taken to the Starkiller Base. But in her own way, she was important to her, providing emotional support when Finn was in coma, and she had helped her integrate herself to the Resistance. Rey cared a lot about her, and when she wasn't around - Rey longed for her. She had longed for Finn too, but it was different. Despite knowing that it would only be a matter of hours or days before they would see each other again, it had always felt like something was missing for her to feel at ease.

It was something she needed to talk to her about, as soon as she would be done with their report on Ilum.

 

She, Chewbacca and Luke Skywalker were welcomed on the tarmac by General Organa, two of her officers, Finn, Poe Dameron and a woman Rey didn't recognize. Judging with the short horns over her bald head and the ornate black tattoos on her lilac skin, she hailed from Iridonia. She was as tall as Rey, and looked like she was into her thirties - she was definitely older than Rey, at least.

"Lieutenant Jun Taas," she introduced herself, reaching out her hand to Rey. "I've heard a lot about you," she continued, glancing briefly at Finn.

"Rey, I am happy to hear that all went well to Ilum. Lieutenant Taas and me would appreciate if you could lend us your help for a future mission," General Organa declared, putting her hand over Rey's shoulder. Rey was taken aback by the way General Organa merely suggested that she could help them, instead of giving her an order. Regardless of the way the general presented it, Rey would have said yes; but she needed to speak to the general about the choice she had made.

"Let me show you all the details inside before you take your decision," Taas offered with a smile.

Rey spent the short walk back to base at Finn and Poe's side. Finn managed to walk with a cane instead of crutches, but his free hand was for now resting over Poe's arm. They dragged behind the others, allowing them to speak in a low voice without being heard.

"I think Taas likes you," Finn commented with a side-grin.

"Who is she, anyway?"

"She's the commander of the Omega special operations team. They've gotten more field combat experience than anyone else on base," Finn explained, admirative.

"Yes, she's pretty cool," Poe added dryly.

"He's jealous because she had wanted to talk to me first when she arrived on base," Finn clarified. He stared into Poe's eyes, his gaze turning soft.

"Of course I'm jealous, she's free to steal you from General Organa for three whole hours and I've been forbidden to do the same!" he protested weakly.

Rey's hand brushed her lightsaber on her belt, loneliness tugging at her heart again. She was tempted to quicken her pace and distance them both, turning the emotional distance into a physical one. But it would be petty and pointless, and she simply bit her lower lip, taking comfort in the hard metal under her fingertips, and on the faint presence of her crystal underneath.

 

The door to the command center opened, and Rey searched instinctively for Kaydel. She noticed her sitting in front of a control panel, headset over her ears. Rey briefly thought she hadn't seen her, until Kaydel's lips stopped moving and they stared in each other's eyes.

It was ridiculous - she knew she wasn't dead, that the Force vision had been just that - the Force testing her. She felt moved at seeing Kaydel standing in the middle of the room. Her warm brown eyes, contrasting with her pale skin and fair hair, her pink lips stretching into a smile. She was tempted to break again from the little group, not to isolate herself, but to connect with someone she cared about. The memories of the embrace they had shared, the happiness she had felt when Kaydel nestled herself against her flooded her mind. Among other things, she realized, it was only with Kaydel that she missed actual, physical contact, in a way she didn't miss it with Poe, Finn, General Organa or anyone else on base.

Once the thought had formed into her mind, she was overwhelmed by the desire to get it out, to share it with Kaydel. She had to know - and Rey dearly hoped that Kaydel had missed her in the same way too.

Maybe it was the Force, or General Organa's looks were just that intense, but Rey felt something tingle behind her neck, and she turned around to see that everyone but the General had entered the meeting room. The older woman had her arms crossed over her chest, but there was no severity in her traits. Instead, her slight smile seemed amused, and Rey's cheeks started to burn.

 

"Now that everyone is here," Taas began once the door to the meeting room, and she glanced up at Rey, "let me explain to you the operation we've started setting up while you three were away."

She typed a few words on a computer set up at one end of the table, and the table's surface turned into a 3D hologram. From the looks of the it, it was an aerial view of pyramid-shaped ancient structures, next to much smaller, modern-looking rectangular buildings.

Chewbacca groaned at the sight. Luke Skywalker frowned, leaning forward.

"What you are looking at, Rey, is a Sith tomb located on Moraband," General Organa explained. "We don't know yet why, but the First Order seem interested in whatever secrets might be buried within."  
Rey nodded. She had read about the place in the Jedi Archives.

"They've sent a small number of troops along with a research team," Finn intervened. "Twenty, maybe thirty troopers tops. Moraband has been forsaken since even before the Galactic Empire, and didn't seem to be of any strategical interest - until now."

"Indeed, we've only been tipped off after intercepting and decrypting a First Order transmission," Taas went on. "the troopers aren't that big of a problem - General Organa is more worried about what we might unearth when we step into these tombs."

"Things that probably should have stayed buried forever," Luke Skywalker said dryly. "But the First Order isn't giving us much of a choice." He lifted his head to stare alternatively at the lieutenant, at Rey and finally at the general.

Rey pinched her lips. The archives warned extensively about the dangers of exploring ancient Sith temples and tombs. Their influence was corrupting, their purpose to take control of the unsuspecting mind for nefarious purposes, even hundreds of years after the Sith civilization had all but collapsed. It was dangerous, but Rey couldn't even bring herself to imagine how the First Order would be able to use the tomb's secret for their own nefarious schemes.

She touched her lightsaber, focusing on the crystal. It felt like it was pulsing at the same rhythm of her heart, a warm and reassuring presence in her mind.

"When are we going?" she asked, forcing herself to smile, to chase away any hint of doubt that could have shown up on her face.

Lieutenant Taas chuckled. "While I do appreciate your enthusiasm, you've got to meet your new team mates, see how you work with them. Finn's also helped us come with a plan to take out our First Order friends, and you need to be acquainted with that."

The lieutenant then glanced interrogatively at Luke Skywalker and Chewbacca.

"Two Jedi are better than one," Luke nodded. Chewbacca growled his assessment.

"It's a done deal, then," Taas concluded, clapping her hands together. "Let us meet again here tomorrow morning at seven-hundred so we can go over it in details."

Everyone nodded in agreement, before leaving the room. Rey walked up to General Organa before she could leave the room.

"General Organa," Rey said, "can I speak to you in private?"

The general shot her a surprised look, and glanced at someone behind Rey's shoulder. Probably Luke Skywalker, she guessed.

"Of course," she replied, placing her hand over Rey's back and guiding her to a door opposite to the one they came in.

The door opened on General Organa's office. Rey expected the office of a general to be bigger than what she was seeing. The furnitures were made up of three hard plastic chairs, a large table encumbered by piles of paper, a datapad precariously lying on top of one, and two open, paper-filled cupboards.

"So," Rey said, looking down at her hands. "I went to Ilum and brought a crystal back." Rey lifted her head up.

Leia Organa remained silent, staring into her eyes, her full attention on her. Rey scratched the back of her hand.

"But… I don't think I am a Jedi."

"It's only the beginning of the journey, Rey," the general assured.

Rey couldn't keep herself from grimacing. "I meant - it's not just that. I don't think I am a Jedi, or a Jedi apprentice, or a padawan. Or anything like that."

The general frowned. "I am not sure I understand, Rey. You are Force-sensitive. I can sense it, even though I am much less knowledgeable than my brother about it."

"That's not what I meant. I… I am Force-sensitive. I brought a crystal back from the cave, I managed to build my own lightsaber. But the way of the Jedi, always controlling your emotions, not letting yourself feel or form bonds with people, I cannot do this. And I had to tell you this, because if you don't want me to help you because of that, I would understand."

Much to Rey's surprise, General Organa smiled at her.

"First of all, Rey, I couldn't believe any organization, be it the Resistance or the must run-down ship's crew in the Galaxy, would ever refuse the help of someone with as many talents as you have cultivated through your life."

She stoop up from her chair, walked around her desk, and sat on the chair next to Rey.

"Then, what you are talking about, what you are experiencing, is a dilemna I had to face many years ago, when my origins were revealed to me."

Rey nodded slowly. She knew her story.

"Luke Skywalker offered to teach me the ways of the Jedi, too. I had other plans. I wanted to keep on fighting to make sure the Galactic Empire would get replaced by a peaceful democracy. I also… had made bonds I wasn't ready to break for everything else in the world."

Her vision briefly clouded as she smiled sadly. Rey lowered her head, remembering how much it had hurt to lose Han Solo, even though she had only known him for a few hours. In comparison, Organa's grief must be unbearable, and yet, she carried on.

"I know you've made friends you care about, and that's all to your credit if you don't want to lose them."

"Even if it means, perhaps, cutting myself off from mastering the Force?" Rey asked.

General Organa leaned back on her chair. She remained silent for a few seconds.

"I believe there is more than the Jedi way or the Sith way to connect oneself to the Force. And even if that was the case, having someone with an imperfect connection to the Force on our side is better than having no one."

The general placed a hand over Rey's shoulders. "Does this answer your question?"

Rey nodded, swallowing. Her words had more or less echoed what Luke had said to her back on Ilum.

"That's good, Rey," General Organa replied. "Now, I believe some of your friends are probably eager that you tell them all about your trip to Ilum."

Rey stood up and bowed briefly before General Organa.

"No need for you to do such a thing, young lady. I am not a princess you need to pay homage to," she laughed.

"One more thing," the general said as Rey had put her hand on the office's door. Rey turned around, and the general was smiling again, in the way she had done while waiting for Rey in the command room.

"You've made some strong bonds yourself in the Resistance, am I wrong?" she asked in a slightly teasing tone.

Rey felt herself blushing up again.

"You don't have to answer that, Rey. Though I wouldn't advise you to keep it to yourself."

"Thanks, General," Rey blurted out. "G-good night, General Organa."

"Good night, Rey."

 

On her way out of the command center, Rey stared again in Kaydel's direction, but the other woman had her back turned to her, looking quite busy. Rey wasn't sure if it was a good or a bad thing.

 

By all means, Rey should feel hungry - she was eating fresh food the first time again in more than a week. Instead, every bite seemed hard to swallow, and she was mindlessly crushing her vegetables after having only eaten half of her plate's content.

"Are you going to eat that?" Finn asked, half-worried, half-envious. With a smile, she handed him her plate, and watched as Finn delved into it, and as Poe stole off a few spoonfuls of the plate's content.

Poe shot her a questioning look, his brow furrowed.

"I'm fine," she replied to his silent question. Her stomach had tied itself up in knots.

Poe simply leaned back on his chair, arms crossed, smirking. Rey suddenly found him insufferable.

 

Rey looked up at her datapad again, sighed, and pressed her head inside her pillow again.

It was past twenty-two thirty and she hadn't seen Kaydel again. The knot in her belly had tightened as the evening went on. Rey guessed that even if she wanted to sleep, she wouldn't even be able to.

Her fingers drummed on the pillow, her legs kicked against the mattress. Even she hadn't been feeling sick in her stomach, she felt like she would have had enough energy to run five times around the base.

Then, there was the familiar click of the door opening, startling her. She rolled off the bed, standing in the middle of the room to welcome her friend in.

"Kaydel," Rey greeted her. Kaydel probably came back from a late dinner at the mess hall, still wearing her green uniform and her polished high boots. Rey had already traded her day clothes for her pajamas, and was now feeling very embarassed.

"Good evening, Rey, but you didn't have to wait for me," Kaydel replied with a smile. It was the first time she saw her face this close since her nightmarish vision. Rey focused on that, on the soothing warmth blossoming in her chest at the vision before her.

"I had to talk to you," Rey said, a little louder than she had wanted to.

Kaydel quirked an eyebrow. "Talk to me?"

"Yes, please." She reached out her hand. Kaydel hesitated, looking up and down at Rey's face and hand, before taking it.

Her hand was a little cold against her own, but her skin was soft, probably softer than her own. The contact sent adrenaline pumping through Rey's veins. She was excited, but the good kind of excited - the kind she felt when she was about to find something worth its weight in rations.

Rey guided her to the bed, gesturing with her free hand to sit down. Rey sat next to her, not letting go of Kaydel's hand.

"Kaydel, I…" She breathed out slowly, trying to untangle her jumbled thoughts. "I just, like you a lot," she blurted out.

"I like you a lot too," Kaydel replied softly.

"That's not what I meant." Rey looked down to their hands, her mind acutely aware of Kaydel's fingers over her skin. That was what she wanted to say - how she felt when she was around the other woman. How much she enjoyed her company, how much she had missed her. How she managed to make her heart beat faster in her chest just by looking at her in her eyes.

"I can't explain it but - I missed you a lot. I missed Finn and Poe and General Organa, too, but it felt different. With you it was different."

Kaydel ran her thumb over Rey's wrist. It was meant to be a soothing gesture, but it only sent more adrenaline shooting through her veins. That good kind of thrill, again.

 

Rey looked up to her. Kaydel's mouth was half-open, a quizzical expression on her face. Rey held out her gaze, studying her face as if it held all the answers Rey was looking for.

"I like to be around you. It makes me feel good. Happy. And again… it feels different. Ever since I've came back here I've wanted to take you into my arms. Because I like that. I like it when we're… close. I'm not sure if it makes any sense."

"It's not that bad of an explanation, if I may say so," Kaydel replied with a smile. "I understand."

Rey shrugged. She expected to feel relieved, but she was growing uncomfortable and ashamed. Wanting to be hugged? Missing someone on just a dozen days-long trip? It sounded now incredibly childish.

"I feel the same," Kaydel said sadly.

Her tone made Rey jump.

"And other things, too," Kaydel continued.

"What… other things?"

"Forbidden by the Jedi Code things." Kaydel's voice was almost inaudible.

"I want to know."

"What would be the point, Rey? It's not something that I can burden you with," Kaydel replied, pulling her hand away. She sighed, stood up from the bed and walked to the door.

"Wait!" Rey yelled, louder than she had wanted the word to come out. She felt sick in her stomach. How did everything start to go so poorly?

Kaydel obeyed, her back turned to Rey, her head hanging low.

Rey tentatively put a hand over Kaydel's shoulder. She felt her jump beneath her hand, but she stood still, and Rey took that as an encouragement. She ran her hand the length of Kaydel's arm, stopping over her hand. Rey took another step, wrapping her arms around Kaydel's frame, pressing her chest against Kaydel's back.

"It was you who told me it was bad to keep things to myself," Rey whispered, her voice trembling. It was hurting her to see Kaydel so upset. She had never cared for anyone else on Jakku, because nobody cared for her anyway. But all of it was a long time ago.

"It wouldn't do any good for any of us to speak about it," Kaydel replied.

"Because of the Jedi Code?"

"Because of what you've told me about the Jedi Code, yes."

"I don't want to follow the Jedi Code, Kaydel."

Rey felt Kaydel shift in her arms, turning around to face her. "Don't say things like that," Kaydel said, frowning.

"Listen to me, Kaydel. I've thought about this. I grew up alone. Now, the Resistance is the only family I've ever had. I don't want to give up on that. I don't want to give up on you."

Kaydel was speechless, her eyes wide-open. She stared silently at her for a few seconds, before looking down, lips pinched.

"So, please, Kaydel, tell me. Tell me how you feel."

Kaydel lifted her hand until her fingertips brushed Rey's cheeks. Instinctively, Rey lowered her head. Kaydel placed her other hand on Rey's shoulder, using it as leverage as she put herself on her tiptoes.

Kaydel's face was so close, it made Rey's head dizzy, as she took in the other woman's features, the warm brown of her eyes, her rosy cheeks and her pink, shiny lips.

Kaydel inched closer, until Rey felt her warm breath blowing over her lips, sending tickles and sparks up and down her spine.

Please don't stop, Rey prayed silently, eyes closed, and then there was Kaydel's unbelievably soft lips against her own. It was like a coil was suddenly released inside her, her worries and anxiety washed away by the raw happiness spreading inside her. Kaydel filled her mind - her smell, her skin under her, the heat radiating from her body. It was an overwhelming, dizzying sensation, but Rey couldn't remember having wanted something with such intensity before.

Rey tightened her arms around Kaydel, until the other woman was completely pressed against her. Kaydel opened her mouth, taking Rey's lower lip and sucking. She had barely put any force in it, but it was enough to send heat pooling down Rey's lower belly. Rey gasped at the sensation, flicking her eyes open.

Kaydel was looking up at her intently, face red and eyes sparkling, her mouth half-open.

"Me too," Rey breathed out, and Kaydel placed her arms around Rey's neck, on her tiptoes again.

Kaydel's kisses were slow and passionate, sucking on her lips thoroughly, making Rey gasp. She then placed her mouth over Rey's, teased Rey's mouth with the tip of her tongue. If Rey had felt good before, this felt great, amazing, and Rey was pretty sure she would have whimpered hadn't she been completely muffled by Kaydel's mouth against her own.

Kaydel pulled away, and Rey was briefly scared they were going to stop already. Kaydel simply smiled, before adjusting the angle of her head and kissing her hard, her tongue running against Rey's own, making Rey feel weak at her knees. Despite how overwhelmed she felt, she noticed that Kaydel was still standing on her tiptoes, and had to more or less hang over Rey to stay at her height. That must be uncomfortable, Rey thought.

Rey ran her hands down Kaydel's back. Kaydel stopped again, looking curiously at Rey. It was Rey's turn to smile without saying anything. She slid her hands over Kaydel's ass - startling her, yet Kaydel's lips stretched into a smile - until they rested over the back of her thighs.

Rey grinned, and lifted Kaydel up. The other woman yelled in surprise, holding onto Rey's back for balance. Rey was holding her firmly, confident in her strength. It was Rey's turn to lift her head up to be at the same height as Kaydel's face, now. Kaydel released her grip on Rey's back, cupping Rey's face with her hands. She spread her thighs a little, crossing her legs behind Rey's lower back.

"Rey, that was, it's…" Kaydel began.

"It's what?" Rey teased. She was filled with pride - not because of her strenght, but because Kaydel trusted her enough to let her weight rest in Rey's arms. She liked that, she realized, and the delicious pressure building up in her belly increased again.

"It's hot," Kaydel replied, before kissing her again. She took full advantage of her new position, exploring, tasting Rey's mouth. Rey closed her eyes again, her mind all on Kaydel warm, wet tongue sliding against her own, engraving it all in her memory. Kaydel pulled out again with a wet popping sound, her gasps echoing Rey's own. Her lips slid from her mouth to her jaw, then to her neck, drawing slow circles over her skin. Kriff, that was good too, so good it made her knees weak again, and a brief panic settled in her mind as she got afraid her legs would give out and make them both fall hard on the floor.

She hurriedly walked backward, aiming for the bunk bed. She hit it sooner than she had expected, her momentum combined with Kaydel's weight making them stumble over the mattress in a cry of surprise.

"Are you okay?" Kaydel asked, leaning over Rey.

"Yeah, I think so." Rey turned her head towards the wall. A few inches and she would have hit her head against it. "I guess I'm better at taking off than at landings,"

"A landing without casualties is a good landing," Kaydel replied, grinning. "Besides, this is better for what I have in mind," she continued in a suggestive voice. She placed her arms on either side of Rey's head, before dropping her down and resuming her kissing. She lightly teased Rey's lips, brushing them with the tip of her tongue. Rey lifted her head to ask for more, but Kaydel was gone before she had the time to do anything.

Kaydel moved her hands over Rey's breasts. She stopped, giving Rey a questioning look. Rey nodded eagerly, Kaydel's light touch enough to make her breathless already. Kaydel moved her hands to the rim of her pajama top, lifting the fabric upward, revealing Rey's bare skin underneath. Rey wriggled and arched her back, the two of them working together to get rid of the top quicker. She brushed against Kaydel while doing so, heightening again her desire.

Kaydel tossed the top on the floor, taking in Rey's breast under her eyes. She licked her lips, a hunger in her eyes that turned Rey on even more, the rush of pleasure translating as an involuntary arch of her hips against Kaydel.

"Rey," Kaydel whispered before leaning down to kiss Rey again. She slid a hand between their bodies, cupping gently Rey's right breast. Rey gasped again, grinding her hips upward, sighing in pleasure.  
Rey closed her eyes, letting her head fall down on the pillow. Kaydel was so good to her, tender kisses contrasting with her tightening grip on her breast, making her gasp as she brushed over her hardened nipple. Each of her careful strokes made her arch her back in pleasure, and drew out low moans from Rey's mouth. Kaydel paused to take a breath, and Rey used that time to slide a hand under Kaydel's shirt. She imitated what she had been to her, feeling her breasts swell up and harden under her touch. It filled her with a new kind of pleasure and joy, and with a smirk, she tugged at Kaydel's fabric, urging her to take it off.

It was Rey's turn to take in Kaydel's naked upper body. She already liked her face, but she loved her body even more. Her breasts were round and firm, her erect nipples dark red. Rey sat up, putting her hands over Kaydel's waist to keep her in place. Rey parted her lips, wrapping them around the tip of her breast, kissing first, savouring the sensation of the warm, hard flesh in her mouth.

"Rey," Kaydel mumbled, and Rey flicked her eyes open to see she had thrown her head backward. She hissed in pleasure, her body shivering and squirming when Rey stuck out her tongue. Rey was filled by pride and happiness, watching Kaydel enjoying herself, gasping and moaning under her tongue and her lips. Kaydel's left hand searched for Rey's breast, while the other tangled itself in Rey's hair.

Kaydel fondled her breast, hard, making Rey even more eager to please her, whispering encouraging words as Rey started sucking on them, the sound of Kaydel's moans and the delicious pain of having her nipple pinched each playing a part in sending delicious waves of pleasure running through her body.

"Kriff, Rey", Kaydel said, letting go of Rey. "Let me make love to you," she demanded in a low, sultry voice. Kaydel kissed her passionately, wrapping her arms around Rey's neck and shifting her weight to make her fall down again on the bed.

Rey watched with anticipation as Kaydel stood up from the bed, removing her boots, pants and underpants in a hurry. Her skin was red above her breast, sweat pearling in her forehead. Her always impeccably tied buns had started to slide down over her ears, or so it seemed, and stray locks escaped from them.

Rey's gaze was then drawn to the inside of Kaydel's legs, dark curled hair over bright pink flesh. Kaydel kneeled back on the bed, this time positioning herself between Rey's legs. Rey got a glimpse on Kaydel's inner thighs, and shivered when she noticed how wet she had looked, droplets running down her skin.

It made her acutely aware of how wet she herself was feeling, suddenly. Kaydel tugged at her pants, and Rey lifted her legs, allowing Kaydel to remove them in one swift motion. She felt cool air over her skin, feeling so sensitive it was enough to make her gasp.

Kaydel leaned over her, kissing her softly on the lips, running her hands up and down her chest and her sides, brushing over her nipples. She shifted her position, until her mouth was over her breast, and she gently took it in her mouth, slow and steady when Rey had been eager and fast before. Two fingertips traced a line between Rey's breast, above her belly, before disappearing between Rey's legs.

Rey cried out both in pleasure and surprise when Kaydel rubbing her finger over her, slowly and thoroughly, at the same right as she was now circling her nipple with her tongue. Rey spread her legs in an unspoken plea. She wanted to laugh at herself for thinking she was turned on before; now she was experiencing pleasure, feeling it through her entire being. She resisted the sudden urge to scream, biting down her lips. Kaydel flicked her eyes open, eyes feverish with desire, and it broke her resolve to stay quiet. She half-moaned, half-cried, expecting some kind of release at letting it out. Instead, it only made her even more turned on, hardening still under Kaydel's patient ministrations. Her pace was slow, and part of her wanted her to quicken up the pace, to be done with it already. Because it was a slow torture, her squirming in pleasure with no release in sight, sweating and feeling herself getting even wetter, barely able to breathe. Another part of her felt like she was floating, in some sort of alterate state of consciousness, where she had never felt so fine before, curious to see how good she would be able to feel.

Kaydel sucked hard on her breast, before releasing it, letting her saliva cool off in the open air. With a glance at Rey, a proud smile on her face, she shifted backwards again, and with a mix of fear and excitation, Rey understood what she was just about to do.

Rey mellowed under her lips and tongue, Kaydel lavishing her with attention, slowly as first as Rey had expected her to be, but it felt so great that Rey didn't mind, instead selfishly focusing on her desire building up higher and higher at the rhythm of Rey's loud moans of pleasure and Kaydel's flicking of her tongue. Rey reached out her hand, placing them on Kaydel's head, patting it in encouragement; she wanted to articulate how good she was too her, how good she was feeling and how it all was thanks for her. Kaydel seemed to have, however, taken her ability to form words away from her. She teased the entrance of her vagina with a crooked finger, the new and strange sensation startling her.

"It's going to make you feel good," Kaydel replied, stopping her gesture and lifted her head up. "Trust me."

So Rey trusted her, closing her eyes again, and indeed, Kaydel was so gentle she barely felt anything until - until there was a light pressure of Kaydel's fingertips inside that started up something deeply rooted inside herself, that made her cry out in pleasure again.

"Yes, that's it," Kaydel whispered, before going down on her again, the tip of her tongue playing on Rey's sensitive spot, while her fingers pressed again, sending another wave of overwhelming pleasure coursing through her entire being.

Then Rey felt like she was jumping, her body arching of its own will, while she clutched the sheets, while she screamed so loudly that in retrospect, she became convinced the whole base must have heard here. For a dozen of seconds that seemed to last an eternity, she felt like she was suspended in the air, propelled by the momentum of her run before gravity caught up to her.

Floating.

Gravity caught up to her, eventually, and when Rey flicked her eyes open again, Kaydel was lying at her side, brushing her hair dampened by sweat aside on her forehead.

"Are you alright?" Kaydel asked, placing her hand over Rey's cheek.

Rey was still reeling from the aftershock, her breath erratic, her heart beating like crazy in her chest. Her throat was as dry as the Jakku sands, she realized as she attempted to make words.

"I guess?" Rey finally said, turning her head to look at Kaydel. "That was…"

Kaydel propped herself on one elbow, her other hand caressing Rey's shoulder. Her hair was now a complete mess, her buns barely hanging on her head. Kaydel didn't seem to mind one bit, her face lightened up by a warm, kind smile.

"That was amazing, Kaydel, I've never- I've never felt something like that before."

Kaydel bit her lower lip, and Rey thought that if her face wasn't already red from the heat and excitation, she would be blushing right now.

"Not even… on your own?"

Rey looked up at the ceiling. "Not really, I mean, I had urges and I figured out that-" Rey wriggled her fingers - "sort of sated them, but it was never like that."

Kaydel leaned down to press a soft kiss over her lips. "You've been missing out," Kaydel whispered to her ear.

"I know!" Rey chuckled. "But I've already learned a lot tonight," she continued. Rey caught Kaydel's hand in her own, entertwining her fingers. The sex - or maybe love-making was more accurate, as it was how Kaydel had called it in the heat of the moment - had been good, great, amazing, but Rey was also craving the simple feeling of Kaydel's body near her own.

Rey rolled to her side, and winced as her thigh made contact with the cooling puddle of the mess Rey had made over the sheets. She must have made quite a face, because Kaydel burst into laughter, and Rey quickly joined her.

They stood up from the bed, not even bothering to put something on as they removed the sheets and rolled them up in one side of the room, next to the pile of discarded clothes.

"Shower?" Kaydel offered, reaching out a hand that Rey accepted.

The water had barely started running that Kaydel had embraced her again, kissing her hard against the wall of the cabin. Rey's desire had been awoken again, and she ground against Kaydel, gasping between two open-mouthed kisses. Kaydel smiled at her, her hand dropping between her bodies, but Rey took her wrist, stopping her motion.

"Let me make love to you," Rey whispered in Kaydel's ear. She flipped them over, so that Kaydel could lean against the wall. Kaydel pulled her into another kiss, as Rey traced a line down to the inside of Kaydel's legs. She teased her lightly with her fingertips, trusting her sense of touch to guide her while her eyes remained on Kaydel's face. She drew pleasure from the way her bright pink lips parted under her touch, from the moans escaping her throat. She fondled her breasts with her free hand, allowing herself to close her eyes to better feel the soft skin hardening against her touch. She took the tip of her nipple between her index and her thumb, pulling and twisting slightly, and Kaydel's moans grew louder and higher, and when Rey opened her eyes again, Kaydel looked desperate.

Rey kneeled down before her, her hands over her thighs. Kaydel spread her legs for her, and Rey kissed her, frowning in concentration, simply brushing her lips over her because sticking her tongue out, and she felt Kaydel's legs shiver under her hands.

"Don't stop," Kaydel begged.

Rey licked and sucked, increasing her pressure at each motion. Kaydel tangled her fingers in her wet hair, pulling her head forward. "Yes, yes, harder please, Rey, please," she whined, panting loudly.

Rey let herself be guided by the sound of Kaydel's voice, decyphering it to find out what she liked the most, increasing the pace of her motions, until she sensed Kaydel's legs shaking hard under her palms. The grip of her fingers on her hair briefly tightened, before loosening as Kaydel let out a long cry. Kaydel's legs gave out under her, but Rey had quick reflexes, and she stood up, catching her in her arms before she could fall.

Rey let her catch her breath as Kaydel had just did for her a few moments before.

"Thank you," Kaydel breathed out as Rey slowly put her down. 

"For catching you?"

"Yes, and well, for what made me almost trip and fall down in the first place," Kaydel said in an amused tone. She pulled her into a kiss again. "It's nice to know you're there to catch me," she whispered in her ear, before pulling her into a tight hug.

 

It was beyond late to go to the base's laundry pick up some clean sheets, so after having cleaned themselves and dried their hair, they both lied on the other bed - Kaydel's bed. It wasn't like either of them wanted to let go of the other, anyway.  
Rey had let Kaydel take her into her arms, and was now resting her head on Kaydel's chest. They had fallen into a comfortable silence, each deep in their thought, sometimes looking up or down at the other and sharing a smile. Rey was feeling incredibly fulfilled, both physically and emotionally. Kaydel was brushing her hair with her hand, her own golden hair untied and running down her back and shoulders.

"You know, when you told me that I will always be there to catch you?" Rey asked in a low voice, as if not to break the atmosphere of serenity that seemed to have envelopped them.

"Yes?"

"You caught me first."

Kaydel stopped her strokes, looking down at Rey with a questioning expression on her face.

"I don't know what that meant, but when I was looking for my crystal, I had Force visions," Rey began. She shifted from her initial position, untangling herself from Kaydel's arms, so she could at her in the eyes without having to lift her head.

"I saw something… horrible," Rey eluded, not wanting to burden Kaydel with the details of her terrifying vision. "And I ran towards what I thought was a forest, but I fell down a cliff, and into water."

Kaydel took Rey's hand inside her own. She smiled at her, encouraging her to go on, though her eyes betrayed her worry.

"It was all in my mind, but I didn't know it at the time. I thought I was going to drown, then I heard you."

"Heard me?"

Rey nodded. "It was your voice. It was what you told me when I was afraid I would fall down a cliff, back on Ahch-To."

Kaydel looked at her with surprise. "What do you think it means?"

"I don't know," Rey admitted. "Maybe it was the Force agreeing with me when I thought I needed my friends more than the Jedi Code."

"Well, that would be nice," Kaydel replied, grinning ear to ear. Rey could see that she didn't really believe her, but she couldn't quite blame her. The idea was crazy, going against more than half of what the Jedi Code taught to the students of the Force. There wasn't a Jedi Order anymore, Rey thought - it was only her and Luke against Snoke and Kylo Ren. She had as much as a claim of making the rules than anyone else in the galaxy, at this point.

"Anyway, Kaydel, I don't know if I would have ever found my crystal out of that if it wasn't for you. And what I felt for you."

Kaydel lowered her gaze, looking down at their tangled hands. "You really believe that?" she asked in a weak voice, her cheeks turning red.

"I do," Rey replied, leaning in to kiss her on her lips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone, and thank you for reading my fic to the end! This was my first fic out of my Stormpilot confort zone. It was an interesting exercice, to say the least. I cannot say I really ship it - Kaydel has, what, two lines in the movie? She's practically an original character outside of her appearance, but I hope you enjoyed reading about my version of her, and her blossoming romance with Rey!
> 
> I'd also like to take the time to say that I still haven't found a beta reader - so if you're interested, hit me up at my tumblr (kumaria.tumblr.com) or my dreamwidth account (kumaria7.dreamwidth.org). In the meantime, I'm very open to constructive criticism, on spelling, grammar, syntax, characterization, etc... I'm always striving to improve my writing!


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